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Here is another scene that popped into my head. It is even rougher than the last. i am going to have a bunch of hammering out of roughish spots. But i guess that is what happens when you use the verbal-vomit technique of getting your ideas out.

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His fingers are cold and brittle. Flexing them relieves the ache, and he again dips the pen in the reservoir of ink and begins scratching out another line of stylishly curving text across the parchment page of his journal. The rolling of the ship and the flickering of the primitive light make the task tedious.

The freezing weather is beginning to wear down the crew. Most, like me, are below in their cabins. A skeleton crew mans the ship with shift changes every five hours. It didn't take them long to adapt to the harsh weather and adjust their regimen. We have lost only three since setting sail twenty cycles ago. My ship, the Illustaar, is the smallest and has the fewest passengers. The Cellestria is almost twice the size and carries not only twice as many people, but is weighted down with livestock and starter crops we will surely need when we land.. Berellia is a cargo vessel and has only a few crew mixed in with the building materials and goods that will see us through until we can establish ourselves. All passengers are human, save for myself and Illudraa, the youngest healer. The humans are apparently barren, so the healer was a necessity.

The humans never cease to amaze me with their childlike curiosity and ingenuity. They are strong and hearty and possess rather logical minds capable of solving complex problems. It is my belief that they are relieved to be leaving the City of the Stars. Their eyes are hopeful and they meet each day eagerly, anxiously looking for the land that signals their freedom. I cannot blame them, really. They had no place in the City. They were not Elf or Dwarf, yet they were subject to the laws of both. I think if I had been allowed to stay, their plight would have become my own. I know I could not have lived like that. It is painful enough that I must live at a distance from all that I once held sacred. To live next to it, yet held apart from it would chip away at my soul until I became as hollow eyed as these humans had become. Maybe, as Gravin believed, this will be the chance the humans need to come into their own. And maybe what I have done will not turn to tradgedy as surely as it would have had we stayed in the City.

I finally dare to hope. I know it will never be as it was for me. never will I again become powerfully filled with the very essence of life and everything beyond as it flows through my fingers and bends to my will. But, I am living. And I will be living the rest of my days in a position to shape the future of these creatures my hands brought into being. For once, I feel responsibility. And it doesn't chafe at my shoulders as much as I expected it would.