Illidan's Private Journal - Lanterns in the Orchard
(Journal fragment, penned in Illidan's hand.)
The Ariakan villa hums with ley beneath its stones. I felt it the moment I crossed the threshold, and for a breath I thought that was why I could not stop watching. But it was not the leyline. It was her.
Her father measured me with silence, her mother with sharper eyes. I answered as I should: polite, contained. Masks I despise. Yet when she laughed, the weight of pretense slipped. Even her raven grew bold enough to steal from my plate. I let it. I let her see me let it.
Later, her mother contrived to send us into the orchard. Lanterns swayed above, blossoms ghost-pale, and the fox – Ginger—tested me. I should have been annoyed. Instead, I found myself grinning like a fool at her tricks, and at the way Lytavis laughed beside me.
I told her the villa felt alive. She answered simply, "Because it is." I did not argue. For once, I had no desire to.
Her hand brushed mine as we carried the basket. I should not mark it at all. And yet, here I am. Writing it by lamplight, when I should be buried in formulae.
It unsettles me. In a house not my own, under lanterns not hung for me, I felt stillness. And it was not the leyline that held me.