Diary Entry 1

I bought this notebook with most of my leftover money to write down my experiences while traveling.

Dad never seems to remember what he did while away from home so I will write down everything I might want to remember, in case I start forgetting things as well.

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We left Oltenia after being attacked by a competitor like us and a bunch of soldiers.

The original plan was to leave the region through the Aegean border instead of the way we came so there wasn't a need to change our plans too much.

The Empire's officials agreed to holding a funeral for Isaac. There weren't many people attending, just us and those who held the ceremony.

During this time, I received a blessing from someone called Lilith. I didn't tell anyone because it didn't feel right to do so at the time but I did ask about the name later. No one knew anything aside from it being a somewhat uncommon first name, I assume she was Isaac's patron.

The blessing gave me a new weapon and changed the effect of the ability Isaac used on me. Both of their descriptions were really vague so I will have to experiment with them later.

We also considered holding a funeral for Rose but ended up delaying that until we got home. She was very much still alive but with another limb gone and her head detached it was incredibly difficult for her to appear among people.

We could fix her head in place with a scarf for now, but that will only work as long as it's cold enough to justify wearing it. It's weird that her becoming mute ended up being the lesser problem.

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We headed north early in the morning.

The rental van got somewhat fixed but it was still incredibly drafty and dad said he'll probably have to buy it once we get back to the docks.

We went the long way home as a form of vacation.

Our first day on the road ended up being mostly uneventful. The first stop was a small farming town where I bought this notebook.

The owner of the place we stayed at for the night happened to own one of the last chicken farms of the world. Our host made us a scrambled egg for dinner and he even let us watch him wrestle a hen for it.

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Today we visited an aquarium.

There were a variety of fish and other sea life there, including a crab that was similar to the ones on Ascension Island, except it was larger and had more legs.

In general, it was hard to see much because there was extremely thick glass surrounding anything big, but the small stuff was interesting.

We all got to choose a souvenir from the gift shop. I got a plush starfish.

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Most of the day was spent with traveling and occasionally eating, mostly starch chips.

Anthony got a call from home. It was hard to make out what was said but it had something to do with not going home for a while, so I guess we'll have to find some more things to do until then.

Note: Anthony ran out of ideas so we're staying at a hotel for a week.

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There are a lot of things in the hotel. Unfortunately, we weren't let into most of the play areas. They said we're too old for them.

Instead we spent most of our time at the indoor pools. Sarah took a liking to the cold outdoor ones for some reason.

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The whole place was shut down because Sarah fell asleep while swimming and someone mistook her for a corpse.

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Drake and Manda have been building a nest behind the kitchen's storage room. No one could figure out where they got the materials for it.

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After paying for our stay, and for the damages they found before we left, we set out to the docks so we could finally get home.

We did have to buy the van.