Okay so it has been a long time, but I am back. Sorry to all my watchers who have been dutifully and loyally awaiting any activity at all from me, but let's hope I get a chance to change that eh?
For the time being, I won't be drawing or shopping anything. Aviary deactivated, so my standard shopping tools are gone and my artistic skills on paper have never been noteworthy.
Therefore, I will instead be posting mainly reiterations of the profiles, settings, and concepts I've developed in the course of my worldbuilding and writing. Yes, before you ask, this includes codices for Apathosis races I spoke of in my previous Journal Entry, and hopefully much more to come.
On a much more personal and important note, I would like to take a moment to remember a dear friend of mine,
. I met her about four, maybe five years ago now, and she was always an innocent, joyous bundle of life. She put her heart into everything she did, and did that all while battling the Big C. In spite of that, I only learned of her illness myself after at least two years of our friendship, because she didn't want to burden me or her other friends. She'd fought cancer for much of the time I'd known her, since meeting her in a random RP chatroom, and still managed to make friends and live a semi-normal life... a true inspiration to me, and I'm sure she would be to anyone that ever had the pleasure of making her acquaintance.
I wish I had happier news at the core of this, but I'm afraid that this is nothing less than a Memento Mori. On December 26th, 2012, Kennedy Elizabeth passed away at the age of 16, after three and a half years of battle against a rare form of bone cancer. I was unfortunate enough to learn of this until some time last month, but in hindsight... I take that not as a shame, but as a last gift from her. Even in dying on my birthday, she managed to leave me a memory. Now, whenever I blow out the candles of my birthday cake, I will remember her, and thank the lord I had the honor of knowing her.
I once said I wish I could have taken her place. That I could have contracted cancer and she gone free. I still wish that, in a sense. However, recently I've come to realize that had she never caught cancer, our friendship might never have truly grown into the chain it was, and she might never have touched as many people as she did in her bravery against such an insidious disease. Now, I have finally come to terms with my own feelings enough to write this, and say that I have accepted it. I know she's in a better place. What's more, I am humbled in that before she disappeared, she herself said that I helped stay true in her faith even in the face of her illness.
Would that I had the words to express my last gift to her in words, but I have not felt poetry in my soul since before I learned she'd passed. Instead, I will simply offer a single animated music video, and close with but a few words.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxmfjZ…Rest in Piece Kennedy Elizabeth, and know that up in heaven, I know you're finally at peace. May I see you again when my own time comes, and may I have have done even half of the good you did to the world.
Goodbye my friend. Three years was not enough to tell you how much I cared about you, so I'll save those words for our next meeting.