I had considered leaving this particular event unmentioned. There is far too much to say, enough to fill an entire novel's worth of pages. I know I cannot hope to recall it all here, nor will I try. And I had concerns about...I suppose I would say, his privacy. Yet this diary is meant to be the outlet for my thoughts, my feelings, my innermost confessions, is it not? And there is no use in pretending that this man has not been a significant presence in my life, and in fact, my home, for the past few weeks. But, let me not get ahead of myself. I will try to summarize how this all came to be.
I was walking home from Bree of an evening, as I have done hundreds of times before. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, until I noticed a faint, acrid scent and flavor in the air. I paused, and within the span of a minute, I saw smoke billowing into the sky from a spot across town. It was late enough that the streets were fairly empty, and all I could think was that I needed to wake and alert whoever I could. So I ran towards the smoke, crying "Fire!" as I went. By the time I got near, I knew it was coming from Beggar's Alley. Folk were drifting out of their houses, and men were shouting and running to and fro. No one seemed willing to enter the burning shack to see if anyone were inside, though someone mentioned a man who was known to reside there, and he had not come out.
It was then that I saw a sight that struck dread to my very core; a hand. A pale, ghostly hand at a window. I did not think, I simply acted. I ran forward, the men shouting at me as if I were mad. And perhaps it was a sort of madness that took me in that moment, for I thought of nothing but the fact that a man was still alive, and if no one did anything, that life would be snuffed out forever in a matter of minutes. Whether it be shameful or not, I know that the loss of Conrob affected my actions that night. I had been helpless to aid the man I loved with all my soul, I had not been at his side when he suffered and perished. I could not stand idly by while this man died the same way; terrified, in agony, alone. I found a stone on the ground nearby and hurled it at the window, shattering it.
I suppose there’s little point in detailing the extraction of the poor man inside, or how I brought him home. By the end of it, he was badly burned, covered in scrapes and bruises, and I was a rather wretched sight myself, having crawled into the broken window to help pull him free. It was made all the more difficult by the fact that he turned out to be a complete invalid, a paralyzed man whose dead weight was torturous to handle. Thankfully, a few of the men standing by stepped in at the very end to help me, or I likely would have perished alongside him, for I had no intention of leaving him to die alone.
He could not move nor speak, and I would never have learned his name, but for the neighbors standing about who spoke it aloud. Zahne, it was. He laid there in the darkness, the house burning behind us, and only through blinking a solitary eye (for the other was quite missing, poor soul) was he able to communicate with me. I asked if he would let me take him to my home, since he had no family, no friends, no one to take him in, and he was likely to die if left there in the street alone. He said yes.
