...because really, sometimes the irony gods just get drunk.

No person has ever held all the power. There must be a balance between chaos and order, dark and light. With the Temple magic bound to you, the realms are no longer in balance. The power could change you... and you could change the magic.

Can we really conquer chaos so easily? If that were so, I should be able to prune the pandemonium of my own soul into something neat and tidy rather than this maze of wants and needs and misgivings that has me forever feeling as if I cannot fit into the landscape of things.

And just as I begin to believe that all is well, there is some subtle change in the light. The room takes its true shape. I fight to go back to that blissful ignorance, but it is too late. The dull pain of truth weights my soul, pulling it under. I am left hopelessly awake.

Beneath the skin, there is fear. Pain. Remorse. Yearning. Desire. A fierce longing for power. All of this. We are joined. It is as if we live in the center of a great storm. Around us the world of the realms revolves like a giant kaleidoscope, images refracted again and again. So many worlds! So much to know.

It's knowing I'll never have what she has--a beauty so powerful it brings things to you. I fear I will always have to chase things I want. I'll always have to wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for.

And for a moment, I understand that I have friends on this lonely path; that sometimes your place is not something you find, but something you have when you need it.