Hi hi I’m sorry I wish I had a good reason for not having updated this in like weeks. I totally don’t, I’ve literally just been… busy? Like… with school work?

That said, without writing I spend a lot of time wallowing and almost no time genuinely reflecting on things that go on in my life so tbh my internet journal habit needs to be pretty high on my priorities list just for like… my mental health lmfao.

It’s strange I’m not totally sure how to write down what I’ve been up to for the last couple weeks? Like everything about my life here at Palefish has been such a hilarious upheaval of every normal thing in my life that I’m not sure how to adequately record it. I really went from spending all day in the back of a car to having a rigid schedule full of homework and enforced exercise and defined mealtimes.

I don’t know exactly how to bring you with me with just the power of my words hahaha, so instead let me just list a few of the best things I have come to depend on since falling into the island’s schedule.

A list of the good things I depend on every day:

1. At approximately 7 minutes before we need to be going down to tend to Polecat, Andie very awkwardly touches my shoulder and then immediately apologizes to wake me up, and trust me, without them I would 100% sleep until lunch

2. I do not understand it but Rook looks refreshed and awake every single morning. We meet him, Bass and Marina in the hall every morning and I don’t get it but Rook always looks like he’s already been up for hours and is totally mentally prepared to handle the day, it’s very reassuring

3. Bass on the other hand is at his absolute worst first thing in the morning and is always disheveled and miserable looking, which is exactly how I feel so that’s also very reassuring. Yesterday he literally forgot to put on one of his socks. Idk how you forget just one sock, but you know what buddy, yeah, mornings are hard I get it

4. Even at his worst, Bass is still a witch and can heat up our water, so we all stole mugs and handfuls of teabags from breakfast last week (I had to steal Andie’s they felt too guilty) and we all clutch our cups of tea as we trudge down to the stables

5. Polecat growls us every single morning despite our greatest efforts to gain his trust and you know what good for him

6. Rook stretching his quads every morning before the run. DON’T JUDGE ME okay I can’t help it the boy has good balance. He also hops from foot to foot while we wait to get going and it bounces his hair LEAVE ME ALONE

7. I like that the first stretch of the morning run is downhill, and I like that at a certain point we turn the corner out of the orchard trees and have a view of the misty pastures and the boat house and the ocean

8. The scones and blackberry jam at breakfast. I would die without them

9. Lily says GOOD MORNING CHICKADEES every single time she enters the classroom, which is pretty much the only thing she says that I understand in her classes so I always appreciate that. Currently we’re studying the theory behind each type of magic. Right now we’re learning about psychics, and I can pretty much sum up what we’ve learned in a single sentence: no one knows why they exist, or where their magic comes from, or how one ends up psychic. That said, there’s still plenty to be said on the matter. There have been plenty of studies about who presents psychic symptoms when, and how those abilities have been used historically, etc. etc. So don’t worry there’s plenty for me to get confused about.

9. I swear to you professor Protsman trips over the slide projector cord AT LEAST once a lecture. I look forward to it every class.

10. I eat mashed potatoes every single day here. Truly a blessed experience

11. Bass is the only human on this earth who could ever explain math and science to me, and while I do not enjoy the time we spend bent over books in the library, Bass patiently breaking down simple concepts with carefully drawn diagrams and visual cues, it’s the only reason I’m not failing that class right now without him and therefor it gets a spot on this list

12. Before bed the four of us always pile into Rook and Bass’ room for cups of cocoa. Apparently Knock and Daryl swear by the power of cheap powdered camping cocoa, so Rook brought a huge tin of the stuff. Every single night it’s absolute (and also literal) magic to watch Bass swirl the cocoa powder into our cold water with his finger and watch it begin to steam.

I’m sure there are more things — I promise there are more than 12 things about life here that I like — but those are the things I remember for now.

We’ve all really sunk into the routine now. November is truly upon us. The last blazes of color are still on the trees in the orchard, but it’s starting to look thinner now. The sky and the ocean are so gray they seem to blur into each other. The intensity of study is beginning to ramp up. The days are all beginning to look the same.

Thank goodness I discovered Bird’s journal.

I’ll be honest, when I grabbed the journal I was mostly expecting complicated technical notes. Like, I was expecting to pick up the journal, and have to battle through context clues, but eventually come to understand what it was they were studying, and why they died.

That has not exactly been the case. There ARE notes inside, certainly, a whole jumble of notes that I’m sure are relevant to what they were working on. Trouble is that they pick up in the middle of a thought without introduction or explanation or any consideration at all for anyone reading besides Bird himself.

I’m sure within those notes there’s plenty to pour over, but I’ll be honest: scraps of arcane knowledge without context is pretty unreadable. No idea what he’s going on about.

Much more readable is everything ELSE in the journal.

I mean lol anyone reading this has gotta understand why it’s exciting to read someone’s journal, right? Well, Bird’s journal is way juicier than anything I’m coming up with. I’m like 😭I have a crush on Neal because he’ll never like me back and I can’t talk to Rook because I’m a pathetic coward 😭 and meanwhile Bird is like the more intimately I come to know the coldness and cruelty lurking within Katharine, the more deeply I find myself loving her. Also, Oscar walked in on Teddy and I banging last night and now he’s hurt and jealous and I’m afraid he’ll tell Rebecca and it will get back to Katharine who will hate me forever.

As far as I can tell the five of them were an incestuous knot of angst and if I’m honest, once I began reading about their trysts and dramas and betrayals I kind of forgot that I was supposed to be reading it to figure out how they died. Pretty soon I was paging past diagrams and sigils and scribbled notes altogether, looking for the pages where he rants about Katharine’s flirting with some classmate or other.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t shown Andie, Bass or Rook the journal. Bird and his friends’ lives feel like my secret. And listen, has it crossed my mind that I should feel bad about depriving the people who loved them of this journal? Sure. But listen, at one point Bird is describing in detail *ahem* certain differences between Katharine and HER COUSIN Oscar and he writes, someone will need to burn this journal soon I expect I can only imagine what anyone would say. So like… no I don’t really feel that bad about not sending the thing to his parents lmfao. If I’m going to feel bad about anything, it should be about reading it at all, not about hoarding it.

I simultaneously feel like I’m committing some delicious scandal, and like Bird is whispering his confidences into my ear.

It’s funny, in a distant way, I know that I should feel a little more urgency about trying to discover what it was that killed them. But I don’t feel it really? I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe it’s just that everyone already acknowledges that something terrible happened to them, so I’m not trying to prove anything. Like, what happened to them is a mystery TO ME, but it’s not a mystery to everyone. Maybe it’s just a simple matter of being busy and exhausted. Maybe I don’t want to go headlong into another one of these things. Maybe I’ve gotten to the point where I know how these mysterious turn out and I’m not quite ready to commit to the potential disaster?

Haaaa probably not that last one.

Whatever it is, I’m finally getting to the end of the casual reading material, and pretty soon all I’m going to be left with is the actual information. I think I’ll probably bring it to the group at that point. See what they have to say.

For now I want to keep Bird to myself.