I suppose I’m nursing a bruised ego today. I ended up feeling somewhat dejected about the Fjord. The society has dispatched an entire envoy out there, even a bunch of lay apprentices and assistants who weren’t competent enough to lick boots when I was still under employ.

I’m no longer part of their designs. I’m a fleshbeast, I’m living, I still have my lower jaw and my emotions.

I shouldn’t care that they no longer need me. And yet I do. That sense of purposefulness I finally had after so long, now evaporated, now fleeting.

…

I don’t ever want to return to the village. The other day, a stranger, though kind, suggested that I do just that. ‘We all have to face our past’, he said. But if I went now, dejected, restless, I’d only make myself feel even worse about trying to make peace with my father and sister. Like a dog with her tail between her legs. I’ve always been stubborn, but damn it, if I weren’t so stubborn I’d never have survived as long as I have.

I have to cling to that.