# 1: a new page in my journal

The first entry is always the hardest. The anxiety over staining the
first page, stealing its virginity only to mess up, blot three words out,
the entire page becoming one big scribbled mess. You cry in frustration,
in remorse, balled up on the floor.

A computer might alleviate some of these symptoms, but the anxiety still
remains. I sit here, perched on my stool as if I were shifted and pecking
all of the keys on the keyboard right now, and I look at the blank screen
in front of me, and I wait. I hesitate. If the first entry isn't perfect,
then who will excuse the inevitable mediocrity of the second? The third? I
can't keep up this perfectionist act forever.

But now that I think about it, not even the best actor can keep up an
act forever.

Outside of the window in the captain's quarters, in the pine tree towering
overhead, are these two birds with red heads and gray bodies flitting
about in mating. Hummingbirds, I think, from their fast and delicate moves,
but Father never taught me to properly identify birds other than myself.

Father...

Today we're stopped in Iawei in Sector Two for a package pickup. The ocean
roars not too far from here. Most of this blasted planet is covered in
ocean, just little crags of islands here and there to break up the blue
monotony. It used to be like Earth, some say, but the ice caps were
*gigantic*, and they melted hundreds upon hundreds of years ago and
flooded all but the highest peaks. Mountains became poor imitations of
tropical islands. Not much grows in the craggy soil. Not that it matters,
since most of the former inhabitants either drowned in the flood or packed
up their riches and fled to other planets in the Orchidia System. Seffie
and I will only be here for a few more hours, and then we're off to Vuebos
to deliver whatever the heck he's picking up this time.

And I *swear*, if it's another assassin, *I'm* going to be the one doing
the hurting.
