Darling

Dear Mother and Father,

I slept in a real live bed!
I suppose I ought to backtrack a little. Yesterday morning, the aetheric anomaly let me go earlier than usual. I took it as a sign of improvement and tried my best to wash out any remaining contamination from my clothes. I also looked everywhere for my Landmark in case I had dropped it somewhere other than Winterfell, but I didn't find it. In the evening, I wasn't sure where to go, but I wandered back and forth throughout the city in search of a place to spend the night. I heard voices in one place that was called "Mama Valdy's". Valdyr is Miss Dreamscape's first name. I had no business going inside, but several people noticed me on the lawn and invited me in--including Miss Dreamscape herself! She survived the fall no worse for the wear! What are Jaegerpeople made of, I wonder?
Inside, there was a party going on, and I made an idiot of myself as usual. Are you quite accustomed to that yet? I'm so sorry. Someday things will get better, I hope. My first misstep involved looking for a knowing-how-to-dance machine and knocking on a circle-adorned knife-throwing target thing instead. That was embarrassing. (Furthermore, when I did find the knowing-how-to-dance machine, I wasn't able to get it to work.) Mr. Baron was there, as well as almost everyone I know and a boy not much older than me who was important enough for the European government to have personal interest in. Could I have possibly had a worse audience for my folly? Then I tried to take a piece of cake that was sitting on the counter, and I ended up tripping and falling out a window which was neither anywhere near the counter nor open at the time. I'm glad it was on the ground floor; it hurt a lot less than my hysteria surgery, and I doubt there will be any permanent marks! But as the gentleman near my age observed, "That takes talent." I believe I have reduced my pool of future suitors. Worse, I learned from the conversation that Mr. Baron has a (barely) unmarried son. You probably knew that already, but if I had known it earlier, perhaps he wouldn't be so close to whomever it is he has it in mind to marry. Ha, listen to my absurd optimism. I couldn't charm my way out of a paper bag and we all know it.
I'm getting to the part about the bed.
The event ended after the younger people's bedtime, so they had to leave early. If it was after their bedtime, it was almost certainly after mine. I considered finding an airship or some such to take me back to Winterfell so as to sleep in the back of Der Hut des Jaeger as I've done in the past. (It's warm there and the fire in the hearth easily stays lit all night.) But some people were going back to Winterfell. I was really not sure how I would be able to sleep there discreetly. After all, I have never been sure if "I leave the place to you," and "Stay as long as you like," can be accurately interpreted as "Feel free to spend the night."
Then Mama Miss Dreamscape jumped in and offered to let me stay upstairs where there are military barracks. She had a bed! It's been so long. There were even blankets on the bed! She said it might be more comfortable with a stuffed raccoon, but either way it was much better than the little seating things at the Winterfell tavern. I don't understand how any of this happened. I didn't do anything for her. I never earned the right to stay on her property. I didn't earn anything. In fact, I fell through her window! All I could come up with was that she meant to kill me in my sleep and sell my insides to science in order to pay for any damage I may have done. But here I am awake and alive; she didn't hurt me in the tiniest bit. I am now thoroughly convinced that regardless of any feral quirks in her race's appearance or mannerisms, she is no less noble than the most upstanding human beings and would never, ever, ever hurt me unless I truly deserved it. I figure I have at least another month.
And yet this matter does not end there. It does not end with a real bed in a real building on The Grid that I am explicitly allowed to sleep in. On my way upstairs to find the sleeping quarters, Mama Miss Dreamscape addressed me as "Darling" for some reason. I don't understand why she did that. This is all so surreal. I would dismiss it as an overly long dream, but my dreams are never this mild, even since coming to Steelhead and having my nighttime delusions overwhelmed with mundane brain-licking alien phantasms. Part of me believes she meant it and wants to live the rest of my life holding on to that arrogant presumption. Part of me wants to stop time right here and now and try to bask in this vanity forever. I am seriously wondering if any of the Sparkpeople have devices that can stop time. Or perhaps they can loop it back on itself. They could find the spot in the future where she finally loses patience with me and loop the day before it back around to yesterday evening. Or maybe the world will end in the near future. With so many mad scientists running around, that isn't a farfetched possibility, is it? The downside of that is that I would never see you again. Please forgive my wicked insolence. Oh, Mother and Father, I know that you love me more than anyone else on either side of Heaven or Earth ever can or will, but Mama Miss Dreamscape called me "Darling"!
But do not think I am so utterly myopic as to have ignored the negatives. Do you remember Porridge the cat? More specifically, do you remember her first owner, and do you remember her home? The poor woman had barely enough money to feed herself, yet she kept shelves and shelves of ornate heirlooms, many of them delicate glass. So when Porridge wanted to get from one end of a shelf to the other, she would tippy-toe on her little fuzzy paws between the ornaments with the skill and grace of a tightrope walker, never displacing a single thing. It occurs to me that it must take great courage to do that, when a single misstep could lead to an irrevocable, sharp, ugly mess of glass and blood. My point is that I feel a lot like Porridge right now, on a shelf surrounded by such beauty as could shatter spectacularly if I jostled it the wrong way--yet Providence has not endowed me with feline grace. So help me, I have no idea how far this shelf goes nor whether I shall make it to the end. There are so many missteps to be taken. It's more lovely than I can bear, and it could be all over so simply. May God in Heaven be with me as soon as He gets over the doily incident that tarnished His favor six years ago.

Shaqad