There is nothing on earth that could make my immediate world any better. I've come from my job interview-- which really couldn't have gone better, not at all-- and I feel very happy about it, and I've just completed Winter's Light and now I'm sitting looking over the woods and it's raining so hard. It's all so beautiful and green and raining and the temperature is perfect, not too hot, not too cold, and here I have all the tea I want to drink, and my beautiful home, and the knowledge that soon I might have a job. These moments are special.
I dreamed in darkness, cold and alone. Phantasms shifted around me, frightening me, but I was powerless to escape them or even move, as I was sealed in a casket. I thought of the Queen, my Stepmother, and tears dripped from my eyes as I considered the quasi-poignant moments we had once shared, when we might have been considered to be close, when the Queen had nearly been a mother to me, and the face of love had shone radiantly upon me, before eclipsed again by the storms of Venus. I thought of the huntsman, stung to consider that my only friend had been poised to betray me, to kill me, and again in my mind I felt the horror of his shadow, of waiting while he came behind me, knowing there was no escape for me from a death he would inflict. My heart lifted as images of the Prince entered my mind, his grace atop a white-maned horse, always out of my reach, just beyond the words I longed to speak. If only there had been more time for us to fall in love. He might have saved me from those...