(no subject)

[Filter: Suaimeas, in Danaan]

I don't want to tell them about the elder stones.

I've started thinking maybe Crionna was right and I just don't understand them since -- since, well, I didn't know any of this! I don't know anything about how Danu gave them to us or how they're a sign of our bond with her or ... or anything like that. But I think she's telling the truth. You can't lie to yourself, right? Or, at least, not without letting yourself know that something is wrong. That you're hiding something. And she'd have no reason to.

I do think they're safe.

Don't ... read this wrong, though. It still makes my skin crawl. Thinking that our stones are holding tiny pieces of glares and glooms, that were -- gigantic, or small and sleek, or had a form better suited to water. And that we're just ... putting on their masks, so to speak. Using them as costumes to change how we manifest.

But I don't think they need to know any of that. I think it'd make them ten thousand times more uncomfortable than it made us ... and I don't think they'd understand.

[Filter: Franelcrew, in Trade]

Hi.

I don't think I'm as good at organizing my thoughts as Suaimeas is, so ... so I'm just going to start writing, and hope that I've remembered everything.

Back before the war, the entire old empire that Kilia used to be the center of ... it was all built on aurae. Aurae is ... special. It amplifies magic, but it also blocks magic, and even just resonates with magic. You all know how strong and unique aurae is. There's nothing like it anywhere else in the world, not anymore. Then, when the glares and glooms started tearing down the world ...

The only thing they couldn't touch was aurae.

But at the same time, they were drawn to it, because of the resonance. They wanted the aurae, but they couldn't do anything to change it, or destroy it, or even corrupt it. Regular magic they would feed on and turn against you, but aurae was completely impervious to whatever else they could do. But they still wanted it. And one day, Ferdiad realized that he could use it against them. Trap them inside aurae. And then the glares and glooms, even the ones they couldn't kill, would be stuck forever, and wouldn't be reborn at all. Ever again. They would eagerly go after the aurae and then be stuck within it, unable to carve their way out or even do anything to it at all.

There's ... there's one other thing.

"Aesdana" means children of Danu. I know we've talked before about how she took us in. How everyone else thought we were monsters that should just die, but Danu wanted to protect us. And use us against the glares and glooms. And, well, obviously she did, but ...

But she's like our mother. The mother of our entire people. I don't know how much that matters. But I want to let you know that ... that's why all the aesdana can't agree on what they think about you. And why they're so heartbroken about Danu ... changing. About her no longer being the person she was, back when she took us under her protection.

Suaimeas has other things to say. He learned a lot about -- about where the Clerics sent everyone, to make up the world you know now. How those people were shaped by the people after the war, thousands of years ago. And more about how the aesdana ... how we were supposed to keep the two worlds in line. Make sure everything that happened in one also happened in the other.

I don't know all the details. We just went over it with each other. But that's what I learned today.