(OOC: The following diary entry is poorly written in an unsteady hand, with multiple misspellings, corrections, and inconsistent grammar.)
Intimate matters, he said! (I had to ask Missus Hopmead how to spell the word. The look she gave me were priceless) Intimate things! Me! Of course, my silly mind is snagged on that part of the conversacion (?) and won't let go of it. It's anoying me.
What makes him think that a simple nobody like me would know anything about that? I'm not married. I've never even been properly courted. Never even had a kiss, as pitiful as it is to say it. Maybe he thinks I'm like those other Bree lasses what have no respect and just go off with the stableboy or the farmhand.
My Pa and Ma raised me right. Pa would tell us about meeting Ma when they were both young. Younger than I am now. He were bringing a wagon of wheat along the road and she were walking the opposite way with a basket of eggs. He'd seen her almost every day for months and months but something on that day was different. He said it were like someone just up and struck him in the face, and he knew he had to talk to her. He offered her a ride in his wagon but she turned him down. She'd laugh when he got to that part of the story and say that she thought he were handsome but it weren't proper to take walks or rides with a lad unless he'd talked to your Pa.
But I sat up all night thinking about what Mister Dimheim had said. Not only that part, but all of it. I went over to tell him I'd lost the healing oil, and I didn't intend to stay long, but he offered me tea and some blueberry pie and we wound up talking all evening and straight into the night. He gets the most puzzled (?) look whenever I tell him something nice about himself. It's funny sometimes, but mostly it's sad. Whoever made him think that he weren't right, and something were wrong with him? Who made him think folk wouldn't like being around him or having his company? I don't know who. It's funny because he seems confused and lost sometimes, and I feel confused and lost sometimes, but he be stiff and cold and I be always going red in the face and looking at my hands and not knowing what to say. He asked why I blush so much. I tried to explain (?) it but I don't think I did very well. I don't think he feels things like I do, or like other people do, and if you've never felt something, it's hard to understand it. He wants to know about people and women and courting and love and...intimate things. I can only tell him what I think and what I've seen, and it isn't much. The best love I ever saw was between my Pa and Ma and they're gone. I remember how I felt around Hultroth or Zeyl, but they never courted me proper or loved me or anything. I can't tell him anything at all about those other things as I don't know anything about it myself. Only that it's something you do when you're proper married or at least proper in love with someone. I want to tell him that he'll know what love is when he feels it. I tried to tell him this, but he didn't seem to understand. It made me think back on the jealous lady I saw there. I asked if he'd never felt his heart beat faster around a woman, or felt anything in his gut, some kind of excitement or joy or anything. He said he hadn't. Gods, that made me so sad to hear it. I wanted to ask if that means he were with a woman he didn't even like? He never even felt his heart skip a beat around her, not once, not ever? The only thing I could say were that I hope he does feel it someday. And I really do hope that for him. Everyone deserves to feel that.
He asked about what sort of gifts I'd want a lad to give me, and when I told him no lad had ever really given me a gift, he got up and went into the next room and came back with something. He just handed it to me as if it were nothing. And it's not nothing, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. A glass bottle of sorts with a cork in one end, and something like water inside, and bits of gold pieces floating around! He said it weren't real gold, it was some exparement (?) he tried and it didn't work the way he wanted. What did that matter to me? I've never even seen a piece of real gold, and this were the prettiest thing I'd ever laid my eyes on! I almost started weeping and he got worried that something were wrong. I had to tell him that sometimes folk cry when they're happy or just feeling a lot of feelings, not just sadness.
I wish he understood. I wish he understood what it means when an orphaned, lame girl says she's never gotten gifts and a man decides he needs to fix that by giving her the most beautiful thing ever. I wish he knew what a kind and honorable and lovely thing that was to do. But I don't think he has a clue. He's good without knowing he's good.
Oh, and about the oil. He weren't angry at all. He weren't even disapointed (?). He said people lose things and it just happens and it were fine. Said I could knit him some pairs of wool socks for himself and his friends for the winter as payment.
See what I mean? A good soul.
