20 August

I should have known that I would be busy for some time after my mishap in the rain, and for that, my dear journal, I apologise profusely! Alas, is it not better to be late doing something for the purpose of productivity? Better I be busy than idle.

After my evening with the Thomases, I was able to collect a few supplies for home and in the morning, Evie invited herself along to help deliver them. I saw nothing distasteful in this arrangement, and happily agreed to it. How exciting, to find a new friend and share with her the comforts of my home, when she had so readily done so for me! What wonderful things would we accomplish when in one another's company? Here, I will very readily admit to being carried away by my inclination toward fantasy, and I spent a long while during our walk towards the cliffs pondering the many things we would do. Only when Evie asked how long I planned to stay in Dorset did I jump from my fond reveries and address her.

"As long as needed, I suppose. I moved for my health, but I would not be opposed to staying even if I improved." This brought about a concerned frown on Evie's tanned face (no doubt from running outside as much as she could, despite the worries of her mother).

"Your health? Are you... taken with something?" She asked so politely that it was almost easy to miss just how distressed she was to hear this.

"A lifetime around ships and smoke and the excess mess of an advanced city is all that ails me," I replied, giving her a relaxing smile. "You need not worry about me!"

"I very much shall," she countered, taking my arm in hers, lest I stumble yet again over the rocky path, "and I will hear no complaints about it." With this kind soul at my side, who was I to complain at all?

Our conversations soon turned toward our futures and ideas about who we would be later in life. I expressed my desire to write novels that would inspire other women as I had been inspired, and she confessed a fondness for wandering, with no real notions of how to turn that into a living. She was delighted to know that taming animals like sheep could be an option. Was there not plenty of wandering there? The idea of farming was introduced, and then I remembered my poor plant situation, and how I wished to buy seeds or something similar to grow! I bemoaned my forgetfulness, but Evie possessed a knowledge of the area and its various plants, and my despair was quickly assuaged by her telling me of the many sorts of flowers and herbs that grew around the cliffs.

"Parsnips and clovers and chamomile and thyme! You shan't be in want of making your own teas," she winked, stopping for a moment to pick a purple blossom, trembling with dew. "If you've any interest in growing poison," she added after a moment's thought, "we've plenty of the deadly sorts growing around. Just don't catch yourself eating them!" Though interested I was in the fear and death of my writing and reading, real-life poisons made me far too anxious, and I politely declined. Upon seeing my face, Evie laughed and threw the flower up in the sky. "Perhaps you'll want to grow things to attract the fauna? Thrushes, crows, shrikes? Or perhaps the bats (of which we shall never be in want of!) and the voles?" Evie went on and on like this, naming so many creatures and flowers and trees and fish that I was soon dizzy with knowledge. An excellent farmer she would have made! She seemed to know how every critter that lived within fifty miles of the town, how it made its home, what it ate. An inspiring idea! I resolved to utilise such information in the next story I crafted, for how would its believability be doubted with the expertise of Evie Thomas?

Our walk soon ended at my lonely little home. The shutters shivered in the slight wind, as though to beckon us further inside, and we were only too happy to oblige - though I had not purchased much from her father's store, its weight was still multiplied by the length of our walk. Upon our hurried entrance to the kitchens, we deposited the various items onto a table and sighed in satisfaction as our delivery was completed. Eager to put to good use my candles, I at once lit several and deposited them across the kitchen, filling it with a friendly glow of simple light. Then, I made tea, and we swallowed down our cups of warmth with heavy smiles.

Pulling her hair out of her ties and letting the tresses of auburn waves free, Evie sighed and raised her curious eyebrows. "You really are alone out here!" I nodded in solemn agreement.

"I do not mind being on my own, but I am afraid the prospect of being so far from town is already wearying my patience for isolation!" I shrugged and raised my cup. To this, Evie explained that town was hardly anything to miss.

"Our neighbours are nice enough," she started, leaning forward conspiratorially, "but by the heavens! They haven't an ounce of excitability to them!" This prompted an exceptional amount of laughter, as all I could remember were her wild brothers and her sister, positive bodies of energy. "No, not them! The rest of the town, the Bath rejects, as I'm so fond of calling them, or us, really."

"Bath rejects?"

"Not everyone is so lucky as you to choose health in Dorset over the spoiled Bath, nearly a day straight of walking to the North. Why did you move here?" asked Evie, and her eyebrows disappeared for a moment in her beautiful hair. The actual answer had been that my parents decided it was a better fit, and I did not deign to question them. Was the excitement of moving to England not enough for me? Was improving my health, regardless of the destination, not a priority? Still, these felt paltry answers to the sensational Evie, and I faltered.

"It is different, here, is it not? Not quite the first choice. I complained of eventual isolation, but I will confess - I wish to write a novel out here!" The idea sounded somewhat silly, and I remember the incident with no small amount of blushing on my behalf, but Evie smiled widely when she heard it.

"How honoured are we, that you chose our little town for such a task!"

"Oh, I am doubtful the damn thing will ever actually get written - "

"You mustn't knock yourself before you've begun," she interrupted sternly, shaking her tea at me. Leaning in curiously (sternness did not appear a trait she could hold for very long), she did ask "Is this your first attempt at writing?"

"In a manner of speaking. It is far easier making up ideas than scribbling them down."

"What is so hard about putting out what you've already thought of?" Had it been voiced by another (and it had, much to my annoyance in the past), I would have found myself frowning and trying to knock some verbal sense into someone, which almost always ended in my stuttering of an incomprehensible point. I do not do well under such criticisms, but Evie nodded at me to explain, showing that she was not asking from a place of condescension.

"Well," I began, trying very hard to organise my thoughts before I fumbled my way through the answer, "you can spend all day coming up with plots and characters and such, but the writing down of it is so... laboured!" Standing and pacing, I found myself unable to contain the physical representation of my own anxiety. What a mess I was, crumbling under even the simplest question! "Each sentence must be unique, and able to stand on its own. Every character must be described in such a way that through dialogue or action alone, you could recognise them on any page."

"The variety troubles you, then? The variety of words and rhythm?"

"Exactly! Where to put a comma, or sever a sentence all together!" Evie nodded and stood, her tea left to her corner of the table.

"I think I understand," she said. Her eyes closed for a moment and she cleared her throat. "What of poetry? Have you attempted the shortened verse, to apply the same ideas with perhaps less of this variety?"

I moaned aloud and threw myself against the window. It was a tad dramatic, but the display wasn't without purpose. "Ten times as miserable! Metaphors and illusions and symbolism abound!" We laughed at that, taking our seats once more when the excitement of my invented drama calmed down. "No, I am afraid I just need the discipline of putting pen to paper and actually finishing something."

Clasping her hands together, Evie grinned, and I felt my heart break just a little bit at the ease with which our friendship had sprung about, a feeling intensified by her next question. "Am I allowed to inquire what your current (and hopefully successful) idea is about?" The mixture of her childish excitement and the adult respect formed in her face a look so sweet and tormented that I knew it would be impossible to deny her the truth of what it was I wrote about.

"It is a ghost story!" I blushed and covered my face, but continued to speak through my trembling hands. "A rather typical story, of isolation and strangers and untrustworthy men, but I'm fond of the genre, I must admit." Here at least we found a similarity, for Evie clapped her approval as though I had already penned the tale, and shared her own passion of a good ghost story. We went on and on about our approval of such works as The Tell-Tale Heart (which I argued was indeed a supernatural story, if not a typical one) and Wuthering Heights, which was Evie's favourite novel. So overcome with grief about the ending, she was easily reduced to a red-eyed remembrance, a sensitivity I suspected was hard-earned in all other aspects of her life.

Our conversation dwindled after that, Evie developing a serious sort of calm about her. She stared into the kitchens with an almost empty expression, as though overcome with the sort of thought that required all of her mental capacities. This gave me the oppourtunity to spy, in a manner of speaking, upon her features, and see what the intricacies of her face told me. I was a terrible judge of character when presented with only a face, but after our night together and our walk and subsequent conversation, I felt as though I had been given enough information to perhaps make sense of Evie Thomas. Her eyes were a soft brown, quite unlike the rest of her family's, but possessed a tenderness that gave her an eternally dreaming quality. I wondered how much of nature and the wilderness she had seen with those eyes! Her hair was up and then down and just as quickly tied up again, always in a state of constant change. I suspected this was due to her inclination towards wandering. To never stop moving must have been an exhausting feature, but then, she did rest now, completely swallowed up in her own mind for a time.

Even now, though, she was not entirely still. Her lips were never safe from being chewed upon in deep thought, and her cheeks twitched with some fond memory or some unlikeable recollection. Dimples formed on otherwise smoothed cheeks, little crooks in the corners of her mouths that I found simply fascinating! Had I been living in England for only a month, I would have seen a hundred other girls who looked like her, but being very new to the country, her handsome freckles and salt-kissed skin were something close to fantasy for me. How very different the town was from the proximity to the sea I was used to!

My spying was cut short when Evie announced that she had better get home before her mother worried to death, and we parted with a kiss on each cheek and promises to meet again soon. As I watched her walk down the path outside and fade in the misty distance, I felt in my heart a deep and sudden sadness for the way she had cried. There was a nagging sense that something had struck her more than it had me in the tragedy of Emily Brontë, and I found myself utterly consumed with the notion that my newfound friend was carrying more than wishes for wandering in the English hills.

I shall put this book up and set about going through my purchases and my thoughts, and will (hopefully) remember to log the latter in the morning.

Curiously, 

Winn