Entrée 1
In the long lights when I dream, I find that my mind wanders back to the moment when I first saw blood spilt, to when I first smelled it upon the wind and tasted it in the air. The blood was so bright, beyond carmine, or scarlet, as though it was illuminated from within rather than by the rays of the sun. Alas, I will never see its like again, except for those fleeting moments in the depths of my mind. No artist has ever been able to recreate it, even when their veins were spilled in the wake of their failures, and never again will I see its like while I walk the earth. Forever, it shall only be a memory, though perhaps that is the truth of much of our lives. In the instant that the moment ends, it becomes irreplaceable, unique, and unfathomably valuable because of it.
Perhaps that is the true beauty of existence.
Perhaps it is death which truly completes us all.
If so, then my fate is doubly cruel, though it is still not as cruel as that which I witnessed upon that day in the garden, the day when the essence of blood was so indelibly etched into my mind.
It was after midday, when the sun reigned high, and the arch of the sky was stained a blue beyond blue, so deep and rich that it, too, exists only in my memories, though it did not captivate me as much as that which followed. I was in the palace gardens that day, with the friend dearest to my heart, Teadora Vadimovna, though we should not have been there. We were neglecting my studies, Teadora being my companion in all things, even my delinquency, though I knew that it was I that had made the choice. Dear Teadora had not the heart to refuse me, nor the station, as I later came to realize, and so it was that I had led her to her death.
Entrée 2