New journal for a new time

I've left my old journal in the burning house, thinking it was wise to leave the past behind, but I couldn't. In hindsight, it was a waste of a good journal and of good memories written within. For once, my worry turned to a boon - the leather bindings helped the paper within survive, although not without some severe damage.
I will have my niece - no longer Pinecone, for now she has a name - copy it, teach her how to handle fragile paper and how to properly write. She will learn from my life, like I do from grandmother's book. Many things happened since my last entry, so I will write it down. For my own sanity, words on paper have that finality to them that accepting thoughts does not. Perhaps that will help me come to terms with it all.

Rowan is dead. According to Silver - who would have no reason to lie to me - he had perished on whatever task he was doing in the North Downs. The land fills me with dread and now I know why - if a man like him had fallen there, it should.
I have spoken his name out into the wind today and lit a small bonfire. I hadn't his body and even if I did, it was not mine to bury, but I held a personal farewell for him, with an effigy made of straw and scraps of cloth I found in that decrepit tunnel he made a lair in. It will have to suffice.

My grandmother is dead. She passed away in the night, in her sleep. It turns out that this year, she was right in her complaints about it. For her, we held a proper farewell, the ashes of her life will give a new one to the forest around the clearing in which her hut stood. In time, forest will reclaim it and she will be forgotten, but yet live on in the trees and undergrowth. Her book of medicine is now mine and I will take care of it.

To that end, I found a doctor from the distant lands that I asked to teach me his methods, but he saw little use in it and I have failed to return to take him up on the offer. I have promised to myself, and to Rowan, that I would go out more often, stay the year and visit the locals more. I have failed in the latter half entirely, stricken with grief and barely leaving my home at all - but also because of who I am, refusing to leave home, hiding in the comfort of being alone. I was wrong to do so.
I promise once again, not to him, but to myself, that I will spend more time with the people. Starting tomorrow, I shall visit the inn within Bree for at least an hour. See who I meet. It is not an ideal place - I hear many rumours of it and few of them positive, but it is as good as anywhere to start. And all the buzz about the place means one thing - there are people in it.

May the fates give me strength to not fail again.