38th July 365 SR

VanQa: a dream come true
For some years I have been going to Eska'eldalie to meet VanQa and watched her slow recovery from the horror of what her step-brother, Iglata the drow, did to her. At first she was in a coma for perhaps half a year, and then was withdrawn and sorrowful for a long time. But she slowly became her old self, accepting the terrible tattoo-marks of possession that Iglata had carved all over her body into her fair skin.

Each visit I made to see her she improved and came a bit more out of her shell. We started exchanging letters and I began to dare to hope the day would come when she returned to Sosaria and she could come to live with me in Fretting Cottage - as, on bended knee, I had begged her to.

Our relationship grew and in her last letter, sent at Yuletide, she enclosed a sprig of mistletoe that I hung over the door to welcome her when she arrived. And so I began to dare to hope that it would happen.

Perhaps I am superstitious but I could not bring myself to challenge chance and refurbish the cottage before she came so it would be welcoming for her. So when the time came and she did arrive, I was unprepared. We kissed beneath the mistletoe, though it was by then high summer. And perhaps it is better that we can build a home together. I have had made a fine elven double bed for us from a carpenter friend of Stewan Seagull. Much still remains to be done, but with VanQa now in my life, all is changed. There is no greater happiness than to share my life with the one I love. And I know that over the years time will enrich and deepen our closeness.