James Hiwatari

You know that quote "We'll be back..." Yeah. That's the demons. Ominous background music and all.

For now you can take the calligraphy as a bit of extra world-building, and an easy way to add visual elements to the story. That said, Nessa is copying a random piece of paper she found inside a book. She still doesn't know what it it says. For all we know, she could have copied the spell to summon the apocalypse so many times over that not even a Messiah will be able to stop it from destroying the world over. As for Nessa's father... he's sure mentioned a lot for someone who supposedly died such a long time ago, isn't he? Am I actually implying anything by this, though? Who knows...

It came back specially for you!

Look, someone noticed the lac of shameless self-promotion of my patreon! It sort of went into hiding that day. I eventually found it under my bed, playing with all the lost treasures I keep there. It said something about "offer Easter Eggs to new patrons" and proceeded to ignore me from then on, so take your own conclusions, I guess...?

22nd January 1995 Dear Diary of Inspired Wardrobes, I won't have time to talk about my date with Lydia before it's officially too late to be awake. All I'll say for now is that I'm definitely going to remember every single detail of it by the time I wake up tomorrow, so you don't have to worry about not getting the full account of it. Now, though, I want to tell you what happened in Kris's room. Because if I hadn't been there and lived through it all, I would never have believe

22nd January 1995 Dear Diary of Exciting Romantic Developments, Lydia and I are going on a date! A date! She invited me last night. We were cuddling in bed after, you know, the most amazing sex I've ever had and Holy Mother Deity how can someone so tiny have so much energy and that's not even mentioning her mouth and... I digress. The point is that she was lying half on the bed, half on top of me, her hand describing circles on my chest and accidentally-on-purpose brush

21st January 1995 Dear Diary of Unsettled Stomachs, Unn still wasn't with us for lunch. It made me worried, even though having Lydia sit next to me and feed me some of her food was quite distracting. Kris made a rude comment at some point (his tone made it obvious what it was, even if I didn't understand the words), which Lydia amusingly translated as "Thank Czer we're not having spaghetti." I was going to ask who this Czer was, but Lydia offered another mouthful of her lemon tofu

I think it had to do with me accidentally posting Scene 50 twice (computer was lagging, so I think I somehow pressed publish twice?), then failing to delete the duplicate chapter and just hiding it instead. I changed the contents when it came time to publish scene 51, but by then I guess people were already having problems. Here's hoping it doesn't happen again... And we're about 2 minutes away from finding out about that mysterious past! Drum roll, please!

What is it about disappearing-and-presumed-dead fathers that lend them so well to those cool theories and speculations and mysteries and plot points? It's probably the whole "presumed dead" thing. Nobody believes they're really dead when they read that. Did you? I mean, I'm not about to say whether the Jurandir-who-is-Nessa's-father is still alive and kicking and will have a major role to play in the plot in the future. And I'm not about to say that Jurandir-who-is-Nessa's-father is also Jurandir -who-wrote-the-book. Because, you know, either of those options (or both) could potentially ruin some nice surprises further down the plot. I'm sure you understand, right?

I'm glad you liked the research-notes-scenes. I might do a few more in the future, if I can make them sound more entertaining than a proper in-story inclusion. I recently started using a world-building site to put together all the information about Nessa's world, if you want to check it out. I haven't gone about publicising it yet because I haven't actually written that many pages, though my plan is to spend at least half a day on it tomorrow, so I might make a proper announcement soon. The world is called "Verdera" (at least in Fadalesh). Click on the link to be the first reader to be officially sent there! (Or wait until Sunday to see more than 3 pages)

You mean the question about Unn moving around? The background to her having a lift in her room instead of one for public use in the house is that they're actually living in building that's quite old for Daisenian standards (as in, about Nessa's age), and to add a lift to an existing "shared" part of the house, it would be a lot of work and remodelling and redesign and be really expensive. Unn's lift was much simpler and cheaper, and works fine as a temporary solution (the permanent one is to move house, but there are some other issues preventing that from happening in the near future). Those dwarves are... somewhat different... (if their biology wasn't a clue). Nothing against dwarves who don't mind bodily functions. But unless your sense of smell is on a more limited side, it's only logical that certain smells would bother you more than others... and potentially evolve into a culture of aversion to them.

Well, technically Nessa has already insulted someone. Two someones, actually. One of them caused her relationship to end. The other caused her to be in potentially bad terms with a housemate. Which means you're absolutely right. Nessa needs to learn to think about her words before she says them, not after. Otherwise her poor Dear Diary will hear a lot complains and heartbreaks... And I'm sure none of us wants to see that happen, right?

21st January 1995 Dear Diary of Cultural Exchanges, I'm sorry I didn't come back to you yesterday, not even to tell you things were going well and you didn't need to worry. Actually, no, I'm not sorry. Yeah, maybe you were worried and all that, but why should I interrupt the best date I've had in ages, kill all the sexy cosy mood we were in, only to scribble a few lines about how Lydia is happy to be my girlfriend again as long as I don't fart or poop in front of her (I think p

20th January 1995 Dear Diary of Friendship is Magic, I came back, see? And it didn't even take that long. Now where was I? (Hold on, let me decipher the hand-writing on the entry above this one.) Yes, yes, Lóránt announced we should talk about Unn. Then there was this dramatic silence that I may or may not be imagining as a way to put up the tension, and we all looked at each other as if we all reached the same conclusion at the same time. 'Is she dead?' Lydia asked. I kn

I know as an author I shouldn't be biased towards pairings and the likes, but those two are actually growing on me. My original plan was to have Nessa end up with someone else, but who knows? The plot is writing itself at this point, and fairies have always been poly, so...

The only thing that would've made this better was if the next scene didn't turn out... the way it did. That said, I've just finished writing scene 54, which... (technically, I'm not supposed to continue this sentence. But just because I like you - and because I took a month to reply to this - I'll give you one word about it: "date")

I'm sure Nessa wholeheartedly agrees with that!

20th January 1995 Dear Yawning Diary, I didn't get to the library today either. I tried, I swear I did! But I wasn't even at the door by the time I heard Lóránt calling everyone other than Unn down to the kitchen. They did an announcement in the house's internal speaker system (I didn't know we had that kind of thing here. But now I can't unsee the speaker attached to the corner of my bedroom wall, nearly obscured by the curtain. I hope it's just to deliver messages, not for anyone

20th January 1995 Dear Diary of Overly Imaginative Dreams, Were you expecting this to be more research notes from my time in the library? So was I. But yesterday I never got to the library, so I couldn't do the research, and so couldn't do the notes. And why did I never get to the library, you ask? Because as soon as I sat foot in the office, I realised that the TV and the couch and my dear Fairy Fun Greenhouse game were feeling really lonely sitting there by themse

19th January 1995 Dear Diary of Epiphanies, I barely slept at night thinking about my step-father and the possibility he isn’t to blame for what happened. I really wish for it to be true, even if it makes me more of a cold-blood killer. I loved him. I spent most of my life with him as my father figure, being there for me when I got hurt, when my friends were playing dirty tricks on me, and when I needed someone to teach me how to manage an overly-hormonal dick. (Seriously, he g

18th January 1995 Dear Diary of Unexpected Flashbacks, I spent my day with Unn today. I wasn’t quite expecting it, but she wasn’t in any condition to go to to school, and I figured it would be better to spend the morning with company, even if that company was still not quite there mentally, if you know what I mean? (In case you don’t, I mean Unn still hadn’t recovered from whatever treatment Lóránt gave her, and it was making her fluctuate in and out of consciousness - and her

17th January 1995 Dear Babysitting Diary, I spent too much time with Unn today. She is one of those people that makes you question everything and everyone in a not-nice away. And I didn’t even necessarily want to be with her! But you remember when she said she could hear my fertilising of the toilet-land? Well, that ability goes two ways. As soon as I came into my room I heard the real, horrible extent of Unn’s food poisoning. I technically knew what was going on (or, more prec

17th January 1995 Dear Dairy Diary, You won't believe who had the same idea as me about using sugary frozen milk to relieve heartache: Lydia. (Actually, you’ll probably believe it, because who else would be having relationship troubles in this house?) This could've been the perfect moment for us to talk, for me to explain my ignorance on dwarven social taboos, and for us to kiss and make up like the civilised teenagers we are, but no such luck. She saw me and ran. Left her

17th January 1995 Dear Diary of Ugly Scars, The first thing Lórant did today after taking away my breakfast tray (I have an angel butler!) was to take the bandage out of my belly and cut away the stitches. There were so many of them! It took ages, each pulling my skin and hurting for that one second that seemed a little too much. And now they’re off and I have an ugly scar where before I had beautiful, unmarked skin. It’s not just ugly, it’s angry. A thick red-ish line, like a

16th January 1995 Dear Diary of Anticlimactic Mysteries, I got bored of all that calligraphy (it sucked as an artwork, didn’t it? Which means it sucked even more as actual writing…) At least now everybody is back from school. I heard Unn and Kris’s voices arguing in front of their rooms. Kris sounded a lot more aggravated than Unn. Then a door slammed (my guess is that it was his) and that was the end of it. I haven’t heard from Lydia yet. I want to say sorry and turn that