Keilune's Diary

[Keilune]

September 26

I haven't been able to write in my journal much because I've been doing so much writing! I am so thankful to Miss Shari for taking me in and helping fix things with my parents.. but wow a whole month of homework to catch up on. I've written three reports in that last week alone. So lets see what's happened in the last week. Waldor and I have been doing more hunting and less fishing after last weeks squishing episode; it's good to feel like I am progressing again. I had came very close to Mr. Amboro banning me entirely from Northrend, so this seemed like a good time to hone my archery skills for a while. Regarding fishing though, I am getting better. Northrend is a good teacher as are the Tuskar. There are still many things to learn before I am even close to the level of the Tuskar, they are true artists.

The Tuskar are an interesting people. I first came across them a few weeks back. It was getting late and the already chill air was getting even colder. I decided to see if I could spend the night at one of their villages: Unu'pe. I spent four days. The first night they treated me as an honoured guest. They fed me and kept me up late with stories of their many whaling adventures. They are quite talkative when you get to know them. The next morning one of the older Tuskar took me to the shore. Oh it was cold... so cold, but he seemed oblivious. He handed me a pole and said simply, “fish”. Well I had no idea what to do, so he showed me how to tie a line and cast it in. “now wait”, he instructed. Sure enough not very much time had passed at all when I felt a strong tug on the line, almost pulling the bobbin underwater. It was a large manta rey. The old Tuskar seemed very pleased. “It is good, for your first fish. I knew you had a good heart.” For the Tuskar, I have come to learn, fishing is a matter of heart and spirit. What one pulls out of the ocean reflects their quality as a person. I've found this to be true as the amount of old boots, twine, weeds and other useless things I manage to fish out increases greatly when I'm upset or unfocused. Humans and their titles... they call me a “master” fisher now and I'm well on my way to “grand master”, but those are meaningful only to people whose lives are governed in decades. Among my own people, I might claim proficiency at the human grand master certification. With the Tuskar, I would still be a baby, not having even hunted my first whale. Those four days were spent entirely with a pole in my hand- aside from dinner. It was a great honour to share my catch with the Tuskar. I kept a portion, but most of it went to their own food stores. I dare say, I probably ate much more than I gave back those few days, but nobody said a word.

On the home front, Kri seems to have found someone. I am so happy for him. I was rather annoyed at first that he found another so soon after the two of us broke up, but I quickly got over that. I'm not only happy for Kri, but relieved and now I hope we can be the close friends that we should have been from the start.

Miss Shari has formally introduced me to Mister Demetrios. He is a kind soul and very respectful. We sit and talk a lot and we even held hands once. It was so cute the way we both put our hands midway between us and inched closer. I think we were both about to expire from nervousness, but we did it.. I think I touched his hand first and he moved closer to mine. There was such electricity in that touch and holding it there kept me blushing the whole time. I hope I wasn't too forward with him.

The one thing that bothers me a little, not about Demi.. it's me. I am trying so hard to be proper, to use Miss and Mister and to measure my words carefully, but it just doesn't feel like me. It talk. I talk fast and I talk a lot. When I'm formal it seems to put this distance between me and the person I am addressing and I don't like that. I love the feeling of just being able to converse without worrying about it. Maybe I'll talk to Miss Shari and see what she has to say. We have an etiquette lesson soon. I guess thats all for now. This was a long entry, but I had a lot to get down.

[Keilune]

September 30

Some days I still feel like such a child, others I feel almost old. I dont know how to describe it. It used to be that sitting on the crates, I would jump at every little noise. Every demon that strode past would set my hairs on end. But now, I hardly notice them. It is still magic that gets me. Every time I feel the air tingling with its casting panic sets in. Sometimes I can hold it back, mostly I just want to crawl inside myself.

I went to the Scarlet Monastery again last night. Just Waldor and me. We didn't do so well. Waldor and I both got hurt pretty badly. I was telling Cirsee about it this morning and she was really firm with me. Told me that something like that would not be looked well upon if I were to become a Cat. Its not just me anymore then, but a family, and.... well she didnt say this, but I understood.... it would be my fault if the person who came to help me was put in danger and hurt. I'm so used to thinking of my self as alone and I wont be alone anymore.

I just don't understand what is happening with me. I used to be content.. thrilled with hunting and fighting at my limit, but lately its gotten much worse. I have to be well beyond my limit to get that same sense of being alive. Is not just testing boundaries anymore, I think I'm becoming addicted to the danger. Even my fighting style is changing. I still use the bow of course, but about half of the time, I drop it and rush in, or I secretly hope that Waldor looses their attention and they come to attack me. I've stopped using my sword, and instead starting using knuckles- brass knuckles. What am I becoming? I'm a simple girl from Dolanaar. I chase butterflies, I draw, I write. I like pretty dresses. When I'm fighting, its like something else takes over. It wants to be close, it wants to feel their breath, it wants to see their face.. even the end of a sword is too far away now. I don't recognize this person that I am changing into.

I don't understand these things.

[Shari'Adune Forestsong]

((I really love reading these! ))

[keilune]

October 10

I took someone's head today and didn't feel a thing. What is wrong with me?

[keilune]

October 25

I missed the party! I so wanted to be there. I had a costume and everything. Dem and I were going to go as Mr. and Mrs. Winter. I don't know what happened, I lay down to take a small nap this afternoon and when I woke up the sun was down and everyone was gone. I didn't even get a chance to see the costumes.

On another note, I received an invitation from Mother today. This time of year is when tAzeroth's swirling devine energies switch direction and this makes the veil between worlds much more permeable. For the Sisters it is a time of reflection, a time for journeys to the other world and it is a time to stand watch at the gates. Some things are not meant to cross over. I have been invited to spend the next couple of weeks with them in meditation and in learning. It is an incredible honour, usually reserved for those very close to taking their vows into the outer circles. Still, i don't know if I will accept. This may well be mother's way of putting me back on a priestess' path and I haven't yet approached Lady Kat for leave.

However, I have been deeply feeling the loss of my daily prayer and meditations. It would be good to reconnect.

[keilune]

Oct 28

I have decided to accept Mother's offer. However, though my days will be spent in meditation I don't feel like I need to ask for leave as Darnassus is only a portal jump away. Yes portal. I'm finally getting over my fear of them and while the magic in Dalaran is disturbing on a fundamental level it no longer fills me with terror.

Sometimes I feel so lost. I don't know who I am anymore. Am I the good Kaldorei who hates magic, distrusts foreigners, refuses drink and prays daily or am I the Cat who is comfortable with her sexuality, enjoys drink's ability to calm and relax, and actually finds that humans often have a wisdom that far exceeds her own? Even more than ever I feel a conflict within and an inconsistency in my nature. One minute I am the giddy teenager, the next I am talking philosophy with a human warlock, finding myself in admiration of her insight.

I desperately need focus and to recenter myself. I wish I could talk to Shari about these things, she has problems of her own and I don't know if Cirsee or Cantera would understand. I hope this time in Darnassus will help me find myself and come to terms with how much this outside world differs from what used to be everything I knew.

Oh and one last thing. I have been eating like mad, crazy amounts of food. Everyone of course expects the obvious, but I am not pregnant! You can't get pregnant your first time, everyone knows that. Still, I wonder why I get so hungry. Its unnatural. If I keep going at this rate, I will blow up into a little round ball with only ears and eyebrows left.

[keilune]

Oct 29

Meditating. I forgot how relaxing the shrine was. Its cool water cascading musically into the pool below, its drops casting mist in all directions. The light has a particular quality following the path of the water as it flows by Elune's grace. So much in that sound, in its radiance. I speak with many people while I am meditating. It calms me. I speak with Amboro, with Miradollia. I speak with Kygia. So many voices, so many minds. I find myself telling them things, looking out of my heart and into theirs. Their words, as they tell me their stories, echo and resonate against the sounds of the fountain; all becomes still and I find myself speaking from a deeper part of me. I barely recognize the words.

It is funny, almost ironic, but my answer to the great conflict that pushed me here has been revealed already. All it took was a mind willing to hear, a heart open to new ideas. The old ways are venerated. They are tried. They have stood the test of time and yet they are unchanging. They are as solid as the stone tablets upon which some of them are written. Yet, Elune's voice is in her song. It flows, clear and brilliant as the water before me. It moves in and out of the crannies of time encompassing all. Her song is constantly changing. It is not even words! We make words from the sound, we carve them in the stone and we say that it is wisdom. But it is the wisdom of a moment, not of an era. True wisdom is letting go of the tablets, and learning again to hear her song. This is the answer I seek. There is no conflict only an ear untuned.

[keilune]

Nov 3

How many days has it been now, three, four? My legs long ago ceased to be numb, ceased complaining about the cold hardness of the stone upon which they rest. My head droops from exhaustion as I try vainly to keep my gaze focused upon the water's surface. It drifts, from rock, to reed, to the water's edge and finally he image grows dim as my body succumbs to sleep. Light becomes sound. As it falls from above, the water's usual deep tone become higher pitched, ethereal, like tiny little bells to a feverish mind.

Then I lose all sensation from my physical body. I realize that I am weightless. All around me is sound, beautiful harmonious sound and with each sound comes a very distinct flavour. The senses are all backward here. What must have been a rock that was close to my body hums with the deep tones of earth, its breath tastes like the sound, as if I am chewing a sweet root. The water itself, sounds like the twinkling of stars and tastes of the most refined sugar, sweet, melting upon my tongue.

If I had a tongue. I become aware that these sensations are not tasted directly, not heard precisely. They are just there, a part of me without effort, without form. Some part of me wonders and in response I see, hear, taste and feel myself as a small ball of light, one of many rising up, higher and higher toward the fountain's bowl. My world explodes in colour.

Rising, falling, it is all the same. I recount this now in bodied terms, but then I only knew myself to be moving, drawn toward that place that is the fountain's bowl, but to me felt like destiny, inevitable. I could have gone in any direction I chose and would still have been moving toward it. Such is the Lady's nature.

The bowl, the bowl is singing in a nutmeg violet spice, its scent infusing into my being, absorbing my mind and my consciousness. I flow effortlessly across its threshold and my world changes.

I am no long a singular thought. I have no form. I am simply a glow along gossamer strands that connect one thing to the next, I follow an inner current that weaves in and out of reality, up and down through time. I am at once nothing, and then everything and then nothing; not so much changing as awareness shifting. As I follow along those paths that are my body, yet also my journey, I see things.. I become things. People. For a fleeting second, I am a Kal'dorei praying silently, long before the sundering. I am her thoughts. I feel her grace, her peace, untouched by war and yet aware of a looming shadow. I stay with her through her existence, through all the troubles and tribulations, all her loss. I feel my heart turn to ice and then to stone. I my limbs grow heavy, until at last Elune calls her home. I understand now why sometimes people do not answer the call of the spirit healer. The soul can hold only so much. Over millenia there comes a time when the burden is too great and Elune must take them away, take them back into the web, into me, to be reborn. This is the larger cycle that many do not see. I move on, her millenia... my millenia, lived and experienced, in time that is not time.

I live many more lives, a gnome in the great city before the plagues, a dwarf or what would later become dwarves, still stone, standing century. I become, I am a mighty Tauren seeking wisdom in the earth, inhaling primal essence and learning to master rage, fear, love. I begin to see how each flows into the next and there is no distinction one from another.

And then I am the web, I am all the billions of motes along it, the uncountable lives throughout existence. I have always been this and to this, I too shall return when my soul has grown weary.

I awaken to a soft touch on my cheek. Mother is calling my name, gazing upon me, her eyes soft. As my mind stirs, coming back to itself, I try to speak. I want to tell her everything, to put into words that which is still formless, but her finger presses against my lips. As our eyes connect, I feel her spirit reach out to me, It touches me, gently, caressing. In that touch I feel her joy and I hear her words, “Welcome, child.”

[keilune]

Nov 3

I am not myself. I am not myself and it feels good, peaceful. I look abut me and everything is vivid, crisp and clear. The night breeze flows by, tickling my exposed skin and flicking my hair playfully. I cannot tell where my feet end and the earth begins. I have told Mira that we are like lilipads. We rise and fall according to the tides and the events in our life and yet there is still that part of me that wants to know. I need to plan. Clarity fails when I look inward and ask tough questions about who I am and where I am going.

When I try to look into the little girl I am, full of doubt and insecurity, full of potential, but lacking experience, clarity fails me. I do not mind this, but rather I accept that I have much work to do and much discovery to be made. I welcome this even though it means going forward blind, feeling my way by faith. I can project my own assessment as I try to guide myself and perhaps my lowly thoughts will prove correct, perhaps not.

I have been learning much about magic lately and about demonology specifically. While I will not practice it, I have been forcing myself to learn about it. I have been actively confronting my fear of portals (with the help of a sister's well placed foot, I might add) and the creepy, slimy feeling I get when around any summoned demon. Mostly, I have been talking to people like Kass, and I hope Lady Kat to understand how they deal with such power and its tendency to corrupt. I have decided that it is not enough for me to simply quote traditional verse, but I need to know why. I need to experience and to take that experience and ground in in Elune's light. I am not content with blindly following something simply because it is tradition, but will ask the great Goddess for understanding.

This process turns my gaze upon myself. I realize now that I have resisted entering the priesthood because it was so vital to mother and her expectations upon me. I saw it only in terms of what I viewed to be her weakness. Now I think that I may have been wrong about her, and wrong about me. I know that if I am to remain truly open to Elune's guidance, I must allow priesthood as a possibility, of only to give myself room to go in that direction as She nudges.

So do I? Do I enter the priesthood? Do I remain a hunter and ground my faith and my love in that? I don't know. I wont know until it unfolds, but I look forward to watching that happen.

[keilune]

((sorry if this seems lacking some posts. Some of the material needs to remain private, so its posted in another location))

Nov 11

I spent the night drinking with Mira. She seemed so sad, and obviously nervous about her meeting tonight. She has so many things competing for her attention right now, I don't know how she manages. I am beginning to think that love is not as simple as I thought it was. I keep making mistakes, Mira is more than five thousand years old and she still struggles with relationships. It seems that if one was ever going to get it right, it would have happened by now. Then again, there are many Kaldorei who have been together as long as Mira has been around, so I don't know. Right now, I don't care. I am swearing off men for the time being- at least anything with the potential for becoming mates. I might have a good romp or two if the situation is right, but no relationships. I don't want it. I am perfectly happy on my own, relying upon myself. I don't need anyone to “complete” me, I am plenty complete on my own. I wonder if that wasn't part of the problem as well. I liked Dem, but I didn't need him. I was fond of him, but I always knew I could continue on just fine and would probably feel freer on my own. Either way, I feel a huge sense of relief not to be responsible for how another person feels and especially not to have to try to manage what I say or what I express. It makes me feel deceitful even when I am not lying.

So yes, mira and I had a good night. Girl talk all night long. We bashed men and cried on each other's shoulder till near daybreak, though I feel sorry for anyone standing below the two of us, as we were at the fountain on the docks. I think we were both sick at least two or three times over the side. At least I don't seem to have a hangover. I must be getting used to this drinking thing.

[keilune]

Nov 25 – early morning

I lie here, wide awake. I tried to sleep a long time ago, but my brain is abuzz with ideas. It feels like my whole body if filled with some kind of intensity that keeps my mind jumping frantically from one thought the next. So, I decided to try to write everything down, get it out of my head so that hopefully I will finally be able to get some relief. My body is so strange all of a sudden. I'm hot one minute, cold the next, I am tender and sensitive to the slightest touch. This isn't the first round of changes I've gone through, as I've gotten my monthly cycles for some time now, but it is perhaps the most intense.

I have so many ideas that I never tell anyone. Most of them I probably should not. Take the Sin'dorei and the Quel'dorei for example. Most people would scowl even at the mention of their names, and yes they are as vicious and cruel when they fight us as we are when we fight them. For my people though, its more than that. It was the Quel'dorei's betrayal that cost us the Well of Eternity to begin with. It was their addiction to magic- our addiction to magic- that so weakened our spirits we were powerless to resist its temptations. So much evil has been loosed upon the world due to our mistakes. The Kal'dorei turned their back upon magic, the Quel'dorei – many of whom became the Sin'dorei did not. Here is a critical point in our history and one where my thoughts are almost heretical. We Kal'dorei despise our cousins because we think them weak, unwilling and unable to break themselves from their addiction. Isn't there another way to look at it though? From the other side, can it not be said that we turned our back on the problem. Instead of facing our addiction, we swore off arcane magic entirely. Was it wisdom, or was it cowardice? We assumed that magic was evil and all consuming and so we never tried to overcome it or to find a new source. The Quel'dorei did. They have tried these many thousands of years. Who has more courage, more integrity, one who runs from her problems, shuts her eyes to her own weakness or the one who faces her addiction? Whether they succeed or not, at least they tried.

I met a being named, Alini. I call her a being because she is so unlike any druid I have ever met. I've only seen her in cat form and she looks positively ancient. She said things to me. Things that should have offended me to the core, but they did not. She had such an intense sincerity to her, that I felt compelled to listen. She was angry. She was angry at me. She refused to say the name Elune, instead calling her by a different name: Mu'Sha. I have yet to find where this name comes from.. Alini told me that Elune had left us, that she had been gone for some time and that it was our fault. She implied that our ways were stolen from another earlier and deeper path that has been all but forgotten. Why was I not angered by this? Instead my mind went to a story I have heard somewhere where our history has been traced back to share some commonality with early Taurens. Could this historical crossing, if it exists at all, be what Alini speaks of? Was there something that predated our understanding of Elune? What if she is right and Elune really is gone? Who have I been praying to? Whose vision did I enter when I went on my retreat?

I started thinking of these things and rather than becoming agitated, I became more and more intrigued by the possibility. I assumed that my vision was through Elune, what if the web I saw wasn't her creation, but that she as a Goddess simply oversaw it, helped along. What if she wasn't helping it along at all except indirectly through our own faith. The thought was so beautiful to me, because it opened the possibility that what I had seen was something even older than the Goddess, something even more profound. I can see Shari's look of disappointment already, but what if we are apart of something that encompasses all of life, includes Elune, the Naaru and is infused with Light? How unifying is it to consider, just for a moment that there is a greater truth that unites all of our unique spiritualities?

I will never ever say this to anyone, but I don't know that immortality was actually a gift. When I read what is put forward by my own people I see rigidity, pride, fear and self doubt cleverly disguised as piousness, culture, sophistication and accomplishment. The older people get the more set they get and I think at some point people stop learning. They stop growing, and in fact, over time those things that stunted their growth become even more entrenched. Immorality is not a gift, because even while the body lives on, I believe that the soul slowly dies. It is drained of its will, of its desire and thirst for new experiences and becomes mired in the sorrows of life. I like to imagine that each race, when created, was given the ability to chose how long they lived. If we think of it like that then who are the wiser ones, those who chose a lifespan so long that their bodies outlived their souls, or those whose souls outlive their bodies? When it happens, and it happens to every Kal'dorei- every being really- immortal or no, at some point when their body dies, their soul simply doesn't return. They are instead taken, called by Elune to a place that no one has ever seen. I like to think this is the great rest where at last the weary are relieved of their burdens and they are reborn into a new life. When I extend this idea to other races, then the humans don't seem quite so ignorant in having chosen a shorter life.

If my parents ever read any of this, I dont know what they would do, but I cant help it. I refuse to believe in a Goddess who is afraid of questions, in a faith that will not stand to examination. My questions are from the heart and they arise from a desire to be a better person and to have my ideals as close to any truth as I can find. If that means I must give up something which is sacred, but wrong, then I must be willing to do that, even if it means upturning my whole belief system. The alternative is holding on to something simply for the fear of letting it go, and that is as far from true faith as one can get.

I've so much more to write about, this is months of work and thought and experience distilled into a couple of pages. I have been so fortunate to have people around me who challenge me, who aren't afraid to confront me and who especially do not reject me even when they see my faults. Gods, I was hopeful that once I got this all out, I could sleep, but I'm even more awake than when I started.