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My heart is heavy, sinking and writhing betwixt the chains it has been set. I could set myself at the feet of The Father, let the words of the one patron rise up in me ‘til it was I found my full – and it still would not be enough. How do I elucidate that which is barely less than the brightest light to my unprotected eyes? How do I put words to a feeling so wonderful it makes the sand and stone beneath my feet sing with every step, and likewise so terrible I curl my fingers to extract blood and divert the trail of pain? I feel it within me, barely contained and using only my painfully Hume skin to keep from flaring and igniting all of Ivalice. Such destruction… I had put myself past such things, once, when I had been met the face of purity of vengeance - so sweet and like a malleable substance within my hands, the one thing that could be mine – and I had turned away from it. ‘Twas the decision of a queen of the realm but made by one who kneels like a beggar at The Father’s feet, who dresses in the armour of men and commands dead men, urchins and pirates, who suffers the emotion of the citizens.

Once, sorrow hung heavy in my eyes. You remember, do you not, my Soldier-Prince? The passion we held, quiet and simmering beneath a clear surface, allied the realms of Dalmasca and Nabradia before… before. I wished to drown underneath the rains that did not cease, let water come and fill my throat and reunite us. It was the silly dream of a bereaved adolescent when faery tale endings were all I craved, when my happy ending was little more than a smashed tea cup, everything spilt with pieces too small to be put back together.

Anger; swift as a fire and mayhap even more deadly, alighting Faram’s nectar deep within me and so warm in my belly. It was at the hand of my black knight, my fallen protector that I let it control me, yield the weapons in my hand and cut down all who dared stand in my path. Be there times I felt little more than a vessel for the expulsion of Dalmasca’s fires, for the Empire to bleed as she had bled. I wanted to melt, be a part of the crimson haze that lit in my eyes when I felt my sword hum as flesh split so easily underneath its blade. Oft times it seemed a gift from the gods, and though I did not know it at the time, it was the will of the Occuria, those deities untouched by humanity, that I walked the path I did. Faram, the Father, the Mother, even the <i>grhmveis</i> of Bhujerba… stayed their hand. There were times when I used every breath in me to loathe those who had forsaken me and the lady Dalmasca.

Sorrow made me weak. Anger gave me strength. And forgiveness… forgiveness made me whole. And it troubles me so; I could be half a Hume – a fallen little princess, little more than a ghost wandering, or a soldier on the frontlines in the armor of men with naught but arms and orders, or a child of Lowtown, stripped of possession and pride – and my heart would ne’er grow heavy as it has done.

How do I say something that no being has created words for? My expressions are lacking and my mouth is dry, it is little more than using my tongue to explore a crater where a tooth ceased to be. I am no scholar – my education as a B’nargin was not light and I am gifted beyond a Dalmascan girl my age to know astronomy and advanced mathematics and even a touch of Old Language – but I am neither a playwright nor poet. I was not raised in the arts of expression and art. But I feel it, and it gives my soul permission to speak and sing, to shout in my ear something so unending I might crumble underneath it. Emotion… no, passion, so damnable a trait to feel with such clarity that ‘twould burn twice as brightly as the sun’s fires. I would be free of it, had I the choice. And to give it words, to write of it and bind it to paper, make it real and solid and less than it should be… I would commit such a crime twice over and again, until my fingers bled of calluses and my soul was purged once more.

An allowance, if you may. I was god-touched, that summer ago, driven by what I believed to be the immortal wishes of my – I might shame him in admitting it, were it was he had awareness of shame –mortal prince. I let the eyes that looked on unwaveringly, the lips that made no sound, and the grip of fingers that could ne’er touch mine again, control my heart as strongly as if he were still alive.

My Soldier Prince, my Rasler, you let your memory be desecrated by the wayward deities. Would you not lend me the strength to stand tall when you were no longer beside me, or are my eyes to see only you until we are together once more?

Was it because of Him that you lent yourself to this?

A year ago, I might have pleaded for forgiveness. I saw not the hands of the gods in that even as they lent voice and guide to my unerring quest, but was being punished for the simplest of crimes of continuing; I was living a half-life, a shell for Dalmasca to fill in her hopes and her cries as the ground itself cracked and bled beneath me. I was disallowed to die with the rest of them. My brothers. My mother and father. My husband, my prince, my heart. By continuing, I was thus punished to continue, to walk on fire and through gauntlets. I know now. It was by the will of the gods – the Occuria, damn them, let them drift between the mortal plane and the afterlife for their part – that I would greet the dawn rather than meet the darkness. The blade of the Empire at his throat, Halim announced to Ivalice I had taken my own life. There were times I wished I had.

Now I am queen. I cannot place my fate at the feet of the gods, I cannot wish nor cry nor feel like an ordinary hume women. I must be a palisade – ever watching, ne’er falling – for my people. I must become what… what my father failed to be. Would they know of the ardor to which I feel, so ordinary and so mortal, Dalmasca would be prey yet again. The queen who fought as a man, they call me, now, singing their songs in the cobbled streets.

Would I correct them? Nay, for it is through simple stories that legend and myth are born, my true weapon against those who would seek to lay my Dalmasca to waste and belittlement once more.

A princess may feel. A queen may not. You said that to me once, do you remember? My Fraudulent Prince, my pirate. I do, it was one of those statements that ring truer than any tolling bells and it was then, for the first time, I felt my feet hesitate beneath me. The path was murky without the guidance of my fallen protector and you… Why did you speak thusly? Did you, with your infant wisdom foresee the end of the story? Or were you simply speaking out of term as was habit? Had you see what I was feeling, had you felt as I did… on the coast, in Archades, so many times through out our journey…How could you speak thusly?

I knelt once, at the side of my gone husband, seeing his face so white and feeling his skin so chilled… I made the vow, then. Ne’er again would my knees touch the floor in submission.

This weight I carry… it gives me need to kneel once more.

I thought you too slippery for even Death. It was the closest thing to admiration I could have allowed you, and even that betrayed me. I mourned. Bitterly, like a child eating a wretched food, fighting the desire to spit it out at any moment, as if Ivalice itself was a duplicitous parent. I mourned with every first bite, and I fought with every second one. Nobody or naught was privy to the struggle that had set upon my writhing heart and tired mind, I stayed my eyes bright and my tongue quick. You would have been proud of me – didn’t you ever see how I sought it? It should have been enough – for two years, it was everything. Dalmasca. It was all I fought for, with the ill-gotten notion that would I restore my dear homeland, time could reverse itself. Even as I grew to fit adulthood, I still clutched to that little girl’s dream. You slid into the situation before I was even aware of it – I may have objected, had I foreseen - and everything changed.

You changed everything. I should hate you for that, but it is not within me to place the burden of bearing hatred on one who is no longer of Ivalice. I am weary of the same anger that had given me such passion; much of me has changed in these short few months. Forgiveness; yes, I grant it to you. I forgive you for instilling within me emotions that I thought it no longer possible to feel, and for taking the path of the hero when all I would have needed was the pirate.

I say it to you, even if you cannot hear it.

I am with child. It is yours, my pirate, for I have not bared the touch of another man since...

Forgiveness. May it make me light once more.

I am more whole than I ever imagined. And I cannot ascertain whether or not I can bear the weight.