I cannot stop shaking, I must have sat here for a good hour or more simply shaking. Was this courage, was this confronting my fate and accepting it no matter the course it takes? I should have stayed at home. I do not know what possessed me to go there that night. It was the wrong time. The wrong place. Gods, I should leave this land. The children, oh gods the children. And the woman's nursemaid. They heard us, they heard us yelling I am sure of it.
It had all started so simply, I cannot even remember the subject of our conversation. The night's events thereafter take precedence. Now all I feel is pain, shame. And the extinguishing of a flame. And I'm seemingly becoming a damned bard after all.
You call that courage? My hands they will not still.
I have ruined it, I have ruined everything between us. And for what?
What has it achieved...
My tongue failed me when it mattered the most, all you had to do was say the words. Explain them, and go home. And yet you could not just do that one simple thing could you?
These were not words upon the tip of my tongue they were words that had lingered so long they were choking me. Why were they so difficult to utter? I have felt it too. That is all you had to say. T'was the only purpose behind your visit.
The truth is my courage deserted me in the end. Ranting and raving, shoving one another. Tussling in the middle of the floor. Whilst children sleep in their beds and their maid. How has it come to this?
If they heard us, if they heard the torrid words that slipped forth from your tongue, then that is it. The game is over. She assures me that they did not. What was I to do, kill them all? If I told you the thought did not cross my mind even for a moment... No, no.
It would not be the first time this has happened, I recall it. I recall it all when my little brother lay sleeping, my infant daughter. The shouting and the screaming, I should not be near them. I should never be permitted to be near a child ever again. No child shall grow up subject to my demons.
I did everything in my power in that moment to attempt to shear the threads woven which bind us. This is foolish, all of it. She tells me she could have continued to share my bed and there be naught more of it, that she did not want to lose my friendship. I did not want to lose hers. Yet how could this continue indefinitely, these midnight trysts of ours.
The truth is I do not want this. I do not wish to harbour these feelings, I wish to banish them. Let them dissipate into the wind, but it hurts. It hurts so much.
She thinks that I am leaving these lands, why would she not? In the moment I did little to correct her impressions. Even what I intended to utter in parting, coming out as it did so garbled I did not correct them.
I cannot go back to that house now. Not after that little display. You are a fool, a complete and utter fool. The light of the dawn creeps in through the window and I have not yet drunk nearly enough.
What if I am simply living now on borrowed time and her nursemaid heard everything?
No good will come of this, what are you to do if she did?
I ask again, how has it come to this?
For not the first time, I don't even know why I am writing. Perhaps it's best if I stop.
