(fragment, penned in Illidan's hand)
I had forgotten what an ordinary morning could feel like.
Bread. Tea. Sunlight through the window. A raven with opinions.
Peace should be uneventful, and yet every moment here seems to carry a quiet sort of meaning.
Skye demanded her tribute before I'd finished my breakfast. Ginger followed, patient as a saint… or a fox determined to be rewarded for existing.
Zoya called us a menagerie. I think she's right.
It's impossible to remain the brooding apprentice in a house where even the fox expects conversation before dawn.
Jace watches all of this with faint disbelief. He has not yet learned that affection is the gravity here—everything orbits it. Sooner or later, he'll be caught by it too.
Lytavis laughed this morning.
I kissed her cheek before lessons, and she smiled as if I'd placed a star in her hands.
It still startles me, how easy it is to forget the world beyond these walls when she looks at me that way.
Lucien's study smells of ink and old magic.
Mine smells of honey and fox fur.
I think I prefer mine.
Darkgrove's voice used to fill every silence in my mind, loud even in his absence.
Now the silences belong to us—shared over tea, over scrolls, over soft laughter drifting from the kitchen.
I am not used to being happy.
But perhaps, with time, I will learn it's language.