I’ve been painting so much that I have totally neglected my diary! That’s bad! (Though the painting was good!) I only noticed now we’re in Valdis that I stopped writing when we had just arrived in Nalenay.

When I woke up we were travelling through a place that was deforested, pretty much, and there were lots of little buildings, obviously not meant for people to live. And those were smokeries — places where hams were being smoked. Those hams are really tasty, and we got some odds and ends for cheap!

And then we suddenly arrived in Nalenay! It’s rather pretty little town on the boards of the river, with a stone gate on both sides and a stone bridge over the river on the north-side. The temple of Mizran used to be guild house for the guild of the Nameless!

There are foundries and things like that just outside the town, on the north-east side. Then you cross a stone bridge and enter the town proper, directly in the market square. On the other of the market square is a stone gatehouse and another bridge, as well as what’s currently the Temple of Mizran but what used to be a Temple to the Nameless.

Like in most of the villages we passed, pretty much all guild members are with the Nameless, which is uncomfortable at the least, especially when they notice me, and see what probably is the youngest and smallest grandmaster they’ve every seen. Compared to us, who are with Anshen, they have one advantage: the Nameless does talk his followers, instead of always keeping silent. Must be nice, sometimes, even though you can count on the Nameless to lie pretty much all the time.

We first took rooms in a nice inn, one for master Jeran and one for Cynla and me. Such luxury after months in the cart!

Then we went on to take a bath, a very, very nice, warm bath, where we also had our hair done (well, Cynla and me, master Jeran is getting balder and balder, I sometimes tease him about that a bit.)

We also had letters for the Temple of Naigha from Ferin and Ashti and from some priestesses of Naigha we had met along the way. The youngest apprentice priestess (there’s a special word for that, but I don’t know it) told us she was sleeping in Ashti’s old bed nook… I told Ashti’s mom and gran about how she was doing well, teaching and getting twins all the time. I also showed the priestesses the painting I had made of the priestess of Naigha who had been so focussed on copying my herbary a few villages back, and they were really impressed. So Cynla and I made portraits of all of them, for free, and I also added, from memory, a portrait of Ashti, on a big sheet of paper so I could also add the ink I had put all over her.

I think that might’ve shocked them a bit…

In any case, we left a load of the pastries we had bought for their dinner and then went on to the inn, where we already had dinner plans with the Mighty Servant from the Temple of Mizran. We showed her the designs we had made for Tylenay and then discussed what opportunities there might be specially for Nalenay’s temple, since it never was built as a temple to begin with.

When we went to take a look, after dinner, it was clear that this was going to be FUN! (And of course, we’re talking mighty Servants here, so it was clear from the outset that they were going to say yes, because if other temples have something new, every temple needs to have it, too.)

The only problem was that there wasn’t a real location for a main window. The back of the building was the actual town wall, and that was unimpiercable. So all I could was work on two side windows. But then I got an idea… If I would make colored glass in the side windows, the light would fall on the statue of Mizran, and… The statue was still unpainted, unsilvered wood, because this is such a recent temple.

If I’d design the light to clothe the unpainted wooden statue, wouldn’t it be cool? So I went and experimented and just designed that. That’s another 300 riders in our retirement fund! Everyone was like, wow, can this actually happen, so I simulated it with semsin light, again (I had tried that before while experimenting), and yes, this is going to be unique… And impressive, and changes throughout the day, and no other temple of Mizran will have something like this.

After that, we knew we were running out of paper, so we needed to get more. That meant going to Gulynay, a nearby village, only two days by cart, and then going back to do the Feast of Mizran market in Nalenay. By then, we had given up on visiting Rizenay this winter, because it was already too late to get there.

We hired a guard to take us there, because of rumors of bandits along the way. He turned out to be a rather dumb, but rather likable, gifted, but no smart, man in our guild. So our journey was uneventful — everyone we met was impressed by his cudgel, and the ones in the Guild of the Nameless were careful enough not to mess with us.

Gulynay turned out to be REALLY EXCITING. There’s so much going on there! A harbor quarter that was actually scary, so I had to hire another guy, a stable hand from our inn, to protect me, I also did his mom’s portrait, a really cool bridge, and so many places where people are working. A fuller’s, a pigment grinders, an oil mill, a weaving workshop, a tapestry workshop and much, much more. We just agreed on making sketches and coming back to make proper paintings.

So, we had a the Mizran Festival market, but I was too busy finishing up the designs for the windows of the Temple of Mizran. Can I just say I’m really good at this stuff or would that be bragging? I think I’m good, though, because people keep being amazed at what I give them, and if things are going like this, I will never have to eat river rat again. I might be able to buy food for me, my sis and my other sis for the rest of my life… Real food, I mean.

It’s mot like we have the same parents, but it’s still sis, sis and me.

(I also agreed to come back to the tapestry workshop to learn how to properly design tapestries. As with glass windows, I think reducing a drawing or a painting to the essentials so it can be made into something physical is SO interesting. It’s like making soup, boiling down a lot of stuff to the expression of the essence of the stuff.)