A Diary Entry

Rain doesn't know, and if it does know, it doesn't seem to give a damn. When sadness filled my mouth and drowned me, the sky was blue. Today, when there's nothing on my mind or in my heart but the average labor I've done all my life, the sky is full of the stuff. It falls down onto the cobbled streets and runs in muddy veins under our feet. I hammer a horseshoe into shape and pretend the rain doesn't resent me. The rain gets in the red-hot iron and hisses, it'll make the shoe porous, but they're made from second-rate iron in the first place.

I dunk the last horseshoe in a bucket of rain water I'd laid out the night before. I hate going to the channels and pulling it up; it feels like I'm a mosquito sucking at the city's blood. Just as I lift up the tongs to look at the still hot but now matte black shoe the rain stops suddenly. I set the horseshoes aside, wipe off my face on a rag just as soaked as I am, and go inside.

My home's empty and small, but there's a bed and a locker, and they're both full up with books. I pick one up, a book of poetry written before the second war, and idly flip through it. The room's dark, but I could light a candle; I use the darkness as an excuse to go for a walk.

As I walk around I am reminded that Stormwind is full of people from every walk of life; criminals and clergy, and that they're all just alive. Those who can live well do so, and them who can't don't. I don't resent them. The architecture is amazing, every stone placed as well as a stone can be placed by man and not by nature. The towers reach up to heaven and hold it in its place (metaphorically of course.), the channels are clean save for the flotsam the people who live in this city put in it. The architecture is good. The city, though, is bad. I knew it even if I can't describe it.

I walked around the Cathedral, and through the trade district, and made my way back to the Dwarven district, to home, by walking along the channel that quartered off the Old City. I passed by a tavern, a hidden place I'd barely noticed before then; I decided I'd take a look around.

Dwarves like to drink, this was what I was told before I ever met a dwarf and what I believed, but, after seeing that place, I doubt it. Maybe stereotypes aren't all true? Nobody was in that dive but a man with glowig eyes, not even a bartender. I don't know what overcame me, but I decided to talk to him when he offered me a drink.

His name was Jaxith, and he seems pretty decent. Reminds me of Andrew Holls, back in Moonbrook. An artistic type, but probably good in a fight. Old Holls carved bears out of wood, but Jaxith carves gems or something. He's a fop, though, but he doesn't seem the type to me. His wrists looked strong to me; they weren't limp at all. Stereotypes have failed me again. He also said he might be able know somebody that can get something to help me through the day; that's good because the stuff I took with me from Westfall isn't going to last forever. Also, he's dead. He did offer me a belt from his flask, though, so I think I'll forgive him.