Confidences

Such a day as this has been — as though a thousand days were squeezed all into the space of one — and now the hour is late. No, it has grown early again. I will say only a little, as I am too weary to write at any significant length, and, anyway, there are parts of it I would never trust to paper.

So much has passed unrecorded. How it was that the woman Bellatrix Bracken arrived from Caledon, and how she managed to aid in the resurrection of Artemisia Paine, her magic succeeding where my science had failed. How, after an absence of several days, Miss Paine returned to our flat at 34 Babbage Canals, and how Bracken followed her back here a day later. How, despite all my initial fear and trepidation, Bellatrix Bracken has not only saved Miss Paine, but cured me of my horrid reliance upon absinthe and laudanum. How Miss Bracken, a skillful surgeon as well as metaphysician, amputated my badly infected left arm at the shoulder (I had not tended the wound inflicted by the werewolf's bite, and it had grown morbid and gangrenous, and she feared the lycanthrope contagion). How I constructed a mechanical, steam-driven arm and hand to function in the place of the ones I had lost. And so on, and so forth. Days of terror and joy and pain and mystery, and yet today has managed to best them all.

While I was tending to various matters at the Museum this afternoon, I was visited by Captain Susenko, who I'd not seen in private since Miss Paine's death. As we stood on the Mezzanine discussing cephalopods and local politics and the like, he confessed a thing I would, even now, have scarcely believed, had he not then shown me the truth of his confession. I begin to believe I have found myself in a land where nothing and no one is what he or she seems.

Two months ago, I would have thought myself insane at the sight of Capt. Susenko's revelation. Merely to behold such a being! But I am not the woman I was two months ago. Indeed, I think I felt an odd delight, more than anything, the sort of delight that, previously, I felt only at far more prosaic....

I do not know how to explain these things. Despite all the ways that I have changed, I have not yet found the language to describe the simple, everyday facts of this world.

Emboldened by the Captain's disclosure, I asked him to accompany me to No. 34, where I meant to show him the truth of who and what I have become. Shortly after we arrived, Miss Paine returned home unexpectedly from one of her peregrinations, and, of course, what I meant to reveal to the Captain, these matters were still unknown to her, as well. I began simply, by removing the sleeve from my left arm to reveal the prosthetic device. I am a vain woman, I will admit, and in times past I never would have done even this much. And then...but there is so much that has passed unrecorded here. That my dreaming shifts through time and space have, lately, been augmented by the ability to shift at will, and how I now may also alter my body. I showed them. I showed the both of them. And they looked upon that abominable shape. That me which is neither machine nor flesh. And I did not see revulsion in their eyes, but only wonder and surprise!

When I had resumed this form, this countenance which I call Nareth Nishi, Miss Paine and I accompanied the Capt. to his home on the western side of the canals. The conversation went on well past sunrise, and wandered far and wide. From forestalled civil war to the fundamental nature of this strange world, from the Time Lords to my fears of the entity which stalks me still, and even then to so many things more. But...I must sleep. My fingers falter at the keys, and the words swim upon the page. I will write more when my head is clearer. I do not dare to even guess at all the implications, the consequences of what has been shown and said and seen. I will have another go at this tomorrow, once my work is finished.