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<Katharina writes in her diary>
Diary of Katharina Arkadia Grauch, Fae's Apex 27
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I really wish I hadn't lost my old diary in my bag in the jungle. Not to think of the bag itself. It was invaluable.
I know I should try to retrieve it, but when should I find the time to do so, between our upcoming expedition and my efforts to try to get Shara back <"on her feet" struck out> on track?
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She has lost much more in the jungle than I did. Including her hope, it seems. I can understand her. The jungle was an ordeal.
But the beginning if it; the day I started from Backstown, or the day Shara and I left Khalia, it all seems so long ago ... it's like it was in another life.
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Yet, our past seems to have followed us here. Sometimes it is a pleasant surprise, like meeting Halen again, and sometimes it is unpleasant, like Master Peck. (who reminds me way too much of my father)
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Shara's past is probably a lot more dire than mine. And I still cannot tell if she actually, honestly wants to leave it behind. She may still secretly cling to it, because it is all she has left.
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And on top of all that, we will soon be heading out again, to some ancient ruins.
Baroc, Tyr'Enn, centuries old ... I am really excited about what we will find there, but I can't shake the feeling that we are descending into some kind of abyss. A hole that reaches down into the very depths of time itself.
That sentence sounds pretty foolish, now that I wrote it down.
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Time is such a strange thing. And the further back you look, the stranger it gets.
We, the humans, settled in these lands nearly a thousand years ago; the Baroc were here even longer and the Tyr'Enn have records reaching back to times we can barely even fathom.
Yet sometimes those ancient times seem closer to me than the time I grew up with my father.
Other times it is as if he is right there again, judgng my every action while I struggle to understand an event that happened a mere 5 years before my birth.
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In the end, all we are is what the past made of us. Molded us into. People, their lives, cities, kingdoms, worlds. Everything that is sprang from what was.
And if we want to survive our journey into the future, we have to listen to the past. But it does not speak to us, not really.
We have to search for glimpses, blurred pictures, faded memories, echoes.
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Yes, that is a good word. Echoes. All we have is echoes. Echoes from the past. How we handle them is our choice.
I should go to sleep now. The next weeks will be very busy.