I think I know why I distanced myself from Willow now. I was going to make her a gift, something with a small ecosystem in it with tiny creatures and everything, but I didn’t know how to create life at the time. It’s something so simple for me to do today, and it was ultimately what drove me towards creating the Ents and towards learning how to manipulate flesh. I was pursuing a distant, almost impossible goal, and I achieved it, all while forgetting why I even started in the first place. A gift for the oldest child of my forest. Now I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again. Thinking back on it, hers was likely the first soul I seeded. Acting on instinct I casted a powerful spell on the tree that became her parent, and meer mana exhaustion wouldn’t have been enough to make me black out like I did, not with my trees supporting me. Cutting a chunk of my soul out, however, would have been more than enough to make me faint back then.

Why did I obsess so much over this silly gift? It was to the point that I didn’t want to see her until it was done, and then I forgot about it while pursuing other things and I still didn’t try to connect with her. Why? I’m an idiot, that’s why.

I want to go to Willow right now and apologize to her, but I can’t leave my forest and I won’t force her to come to me. I could maybe write a letter, but there is no guarantee it will ever reach her. Besides, what could I say? Apologies over paper are cheap, and I don’t think I can ask her to return to the scene where she watched the man that was basically her father get murdered.

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Which was also my fault. I could have done something about Thes’s rage. It might not have been easy, but when has that ever mattered to me? Even now I can think of a dozen ways I could have used Drowsy Clover, Dead Tulip, Astrie, and some good old fashioned healing to at least buy some time. And that is with only a moment's thought. Yes, I’m better at all of that today, but I could have figured out how to fix him if I had just cared enough to put in a concerted effort. Why didn’t I? Because I thought it was boring, and because I thought Mest and Tiddol had it handled. I wish I could go back in time and strangle myself right now.

I was more concerned with the health of a dungeon after Thes relieved his anger on it than I was about a friend an ally that was close at hand.

I still have the knife Thes gave me for my birthday last year. It’s sitting by my bed, untouched. I still remember Thes begging me to kill him when he inevitably snapped, but I couldn’t bring myself to try. I knew none of us were strong enough to restrain him, even if we could all worked together flawlessly. But I could have killed him, I had dozens of opportunities to do so, and it is what he wanted me to do. But I didn’t, because I couldn’t bring myself to honor his wishes, and Mest paid the price. Now all of us are a little worse off because of it.

I can’t bring back the dead, but maybe I can make a gift in case my eldest decides to come back home.

Anyway, Good Night Diary.