thoughts from the edge

I found out that the matter of the Imperial ghost has been resolved. I am so glad that the poor child has finally found rest, but there are still so many nagging questions about the device in the basement and Moriarity. I had another chat with Beq at the bakery today, but there are still more questions than answers. What purpose do the devices serve? Why are the cuckoos back? Is Moriarity still trying to open the portal, and how will he do it since by all accounts the device is inoperative?

I arrived in New Babbage well after the original matter was concluded, and while I have become acquainted with several of the principals involved in the original matter, I can't help but ask myself if I should be concerned with any of it. It isn't my fight, and no one has even mentioned that I should involve myself in it. The amulet was luck and timing for my part in it, and I wonder if things would have been as simple for others had I remained uninvolved.

It reminded me of something that happened years ago, when I was still in school. It was the fall before the fever took Mother...I came home in tears, with a torn dress and bloodied knees. She asked me what had happened, and I said that another girl had been bullied by a boy in the schoolyard. I stood up to him, and he knocked me down. Mother said that I was too much like Father, that I had too much of a knight errant's spirit to allow wrongs to go unrighted.

I remember reading that the two of them are married, and I am sitting at my desk writing this.