Sophia Brings Enlightenment

With a guestlist more numerous than I had ever imagined, Circé's home swelled with colorfully arrayed sequinned masks hiding the faces of important people from each other, as well as myself. I did not wear a mask... for I somehow sensed that no one really cared much who I was, so long as the music was pleasant to the ear. I did not even stay until the last of them dispersed, but went off to bed fairly early in the night to ponder my own thoughts in the silence. It seems of late, that is all I do. Think. And think some more.

It was the following day however, that I had an epiphany of sorts. Circé took me to the Arena again to watch the gladatorial fights, where she enlisted my help in selecting a winner to gamble a bit of coin on.

My mind instantly dwellt upon the loser of such an outcome, and I found making such a choice much too difficult. Natural-born Gamblers, it seems, have more stout hearts and stronger stomachs... as mine forever reels back in memory of my Slink. And I can only hope she still lives and breathes, and still thinks of me.

I think too, after a very short-lived conversation between Circé and myself in her private viewing box at the Arena, that going far away on an adventure with me would somehow be detrimental to her overall reputation. It had been simply a fleeting fanciful pipedream on her part those few hands ago when I had first arrived at House Veneficus. For Sophia has whispered sweetly her imparted wisdom to me, that some things are best forgotten and laid to rest. Never to be resurrected. This, my Epiphany:

Circé had a dream.
From which she has since awakened.