#caelum

Aster:

Caelum: beloved little brother, finds him adorable at times and honestly, he can't do any wrong in her eyes. would commit murder if he was in danger.

Caspian: ex. she wishes things had been different. she wishes their kids had lived. she wishes... no. no used crying over lost dreams... so she left.

Caspian's Brothers, Lyra: loved them dearly. writes letters to augustine from time to time. misses lyra the most. she was her apprentice.

tbd: neuvillette

Caelum:

Aster: big sister, traveled far from natlan to be with her in fontaine. wishes she'd go back to natlan, but he understands why. he mourns with her over the loss of his nieces/nephews.

Silas: ex, best friend, writes him often. misses him fiercely but he can't abandon his sister.

Silas' Brothers, Lyra: respects them and writes to them often as well. usually its augustine who responds.

tbd: neuvillette

Caspian:

Augustine: younger brother. worries for him. knows how deeply the loss of his wife hit him. does his best to try and be his pillar of strength when he needs it.

Silas: baby brother. finds him amusing and appreciates silas being the glue to keep caspian and augustine from going too far. glad at least his brother has hobbies and friends.

Lyra: dear niece. lyra has him wrapped around her finger and honestly, he thanks her for it. fondly remembers lyra holding onto his arm or sitting on his shoulder, or even showing him her arts and crafts. she still does the latter. proudly wears earrings or rings she's crafted. worries about her eccentric natures sometimes, however. knows she's grieving in her own way.

Aster: ex. misses her. she was the greatest thing that happened to him and... he knows it can never be that way again. mourns their lost children still some nights.

Caelum: employee, friend. glad he went to be with aster, but does miss the extra help around the bar.

others tbd; mavuika

Augustine:

Lyra: darling daughter. she can't do any wrong in his eyes. misses when the days were simpler and she smiled a bit more. misses chasing each other as dragons or him reading to her a book she had just gotten. spoils her rotten.

Caspian: older brother. respects him immensely, knows he's hurting when he won't say so about aster and their lost kids. wishes he'd figure out what he wants to do with his heart at some point, however.

Silas: baby brother. loves him dearly but sometimes gets a bit exasperated over his carefree attitude.

Aster: caspian's ex. despite everything, he views her as a friend. the two often spent nights drinking together with his wife when she was alive. he misses her spirited nature.

Caelum: friend, little brother figure. glad he and silas are still exchanging letters. aware of the nature of their relationship even if others aren't.

others tbd; mavuika, citlali

Silas:

Caspian: oldest brother. respects him, and vice versa. finds the fact he has a woman on each arm often a bit amusing. wishes he'd go find aster himself and drag her back home, cause then, maybe, caelum would come home too.

Augustine: older brother. hates to see how broken he is. dragons live longer then most, an thus, ten years of mourning is sometimes only a year to some. nevertheless, he hopes his brother's joy comes back again soon. it's what his wife would have wanted.

Lyra: niece. the closest to lyra in recent days and a sympathetic ear to the fact she doesn't know how she's supposed to grieve. often seen with her on his day off. glad she's at least making friends.

Aster: older sister figure, friend. sad that caspian and her broke up. he would've liked to see their kids running around natlan. understands some wounds can never truly heal, and so, he just hopes she's doing alright in fontaine.

Caelum: best friend, ex. fell in love with him when he knows he shouldn't have. his heart aches for caelum but he's learning to move on as caelum isn't coming home for a long, long time.

others tbd; mavuika

Lyra:

Augustine: father. respects him immensely, but worries for his well-being. can be exasperated with his protectiveness at times. misses the happier times when her mother was alive.

Caspian: uncle. respects him immensely. misses being small enough to sit on his shoulder at times and yet, he looks forward to all the stories he tells about him, her dad, and silas when they were younger. the jewelry he wears were the pieces she forged herself. gives the best hugs.

Silas: favorite uncle, closest confidant. seeks him out for comfort in learning how to navigate her grief.

Aster: aunt figure. misses aster's cooking and going flying with her as dragons. hopes she's doing well in fontaine.

Caelum: older brother figure. aware of the nature of his relationship with silas, and now that they're just friends. hopes he's doing alright.

Spoilers ahead for: The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson (specifically for Words of Radiance, about King Taravangian), my creative projects (Caelum; Greener Pastures)

I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a bit chattier this go around; I usually just dump the photos and leave but I wanted to try and add some captions for once

Also, last thing: I don't know if I mentioned it last journal, but the highlighting either bracketing a page in the corners or on the left of a passage/image is a color key! it helps me find stuff easier, especially on the fuller and more erratic pages. If you're curious, the key ls:

Pink for Journaling (this also covers anything tarot or therapy related, not that i did a single tarot-related thing this whole journal lol. really dropped the ball there) Orange for Work (usually lists for what needs prepped lol) Yellow for Unfinished Business (a purposefully macabre name for things i need to remember to do at some point) Green for Archive (formerly known as Notes, but also encompassing misc lists and non-work to-do lists, planning, etc--a category I'm still working on defining properly) Blue for Recreation (consumed media: books, film/tv, video or physical games) Purple for Creative (typically self-produced media: Drawing, Writing, Crochet, Playing music. Anything about Caelum, Greener Pastures, or any other future projects will also be tagged purple

Alright, let's get down to it:

some more caelum and greener pastures stuff: pretty sure this is where I came up with Thornsweet for the name of Frances' home and of that arc of Caelum's story. Plus a rather cute sketch of Katastrofeirys alongside some wordbuilding workshopping for Greener Pastures

told you there were more zentangles this time. I wont show them all; some I wrote over with things that don't need sharing, and some were just kind of ugly. They are really relaxing to do though :) I use a bullet-nibbed alcohol marker for mine usually (the brand is Bianyo, i have no idea if it's good bc i do not know how to use them properly lol)

there are also a lot more pressed flowers this go around; I got a proper flower press for my birthday back in December, which was during Journal 2, but I was lacking much to press until I started 3 and spring rolled around. I'm obviously still pretty novice at it, but it is what it is!

SLA Spoilers! This one is kind of just a journal entry/self observation, but it was one of the many epiphanies that led me to going back to therapy and getting on ADHD medication :)

a more freakazoid Katy (though I forgot one of her sets of legs :c). There's something about this one though that i just love

more flowers, as promised! I couldn't ID all of them, but the yellow one on the first page is yellow jessamine (home of my favorite smell EVER please someone make a perfume oil of it), and the big one on the second I'm pretty sure is wisteria that happens to grow along the fence in my backyard

back on that Caelum: Thornsweet grind. I had so many story ideas while working on this journal, and as a side effect I drew Iry a LOT. At this point I was still struggling to figure out how to draw Frances, and I lowkey still am. I'm finding it hard to balance all of the characteristics I want to give her 😭 bUT i did solidify their ship name as Frei, which i like for a lot of reasons

I started making myself Weekly Dashboards during this journal (there's one I share later, keep an eye out), and I wanted to add a low effort hobby tracker I would actually use. I wanted a way to see what and how much of a hobby I was doing a day without pressuring myself to do more than I felt up for or feeling guilty for doing little-to-none of some. I combined it with an existing method of mood/vibe tracking and gratitude journaling I'd been doing already to encourage myself to microjournal a bit, and ended up with something that looks a bit like a game's HUD or UI bar lol

you may have noticed that unlike the blank pages of the last two journals, this book is dot-gridded. I initially wasn't a fan of this, as I wanted to maintain the chaotic nature I had before with the totally blank pages, but I reeeeeally wanted this yellow color and they only had it on DB with the dot grid.

I ended up really loving it though. It adds just enough structure for when I want it, but is unobtrusive enough to ignore when sketching or journaling when I'm too tired to give a shit about writing straight. It also really came in handy for those dashboards, let me assure you.

I bought my fourth journal at the same time as I did this one, since both were on DB and colors I'd wanted, but 4 is blank paged again. I'd thought I would look forward to returning to the blank pages, but honestly, I miss the dots :') I'll be returning to them going forward, for sure, unless another DB stands between me and a prized color lol

ok, back to business! another Iry in the new outfit I've been designing for her, and some notes for a crochet pattern I was following. (I have bought so many Biyabimi patterns it is not even funny. I highly recommend her work: the patterns are very thorough, and not super expensive! and often very cute c:)

notes from a therapy session! i've recently gone from weekly to bi-weekly to now monthly, and I'm so glad I've gone back. I also finally started getting medication to manage my ADHD while working on this journal, which has also been help and hurdle.

ok really though. is it just because everyone already calls me bekah? bc I introduce myself with my full name every time and without fail it gets shortened. I don't hate it, but now that I've finally grown to like my full name (i didn't when I was younger, and did the opposite and introduced as Bekah intentionally), no one uses it. Karma, I guess.

fun fact, as alluded to on this page, I recently acquired a trombone for the first time since highschool (like five years--ouch). she's a real beaut, an antique silver-polished student tenor who is older than just about anything else in my house--I don't have any good pictures of her to share atm (trombones are hard to photograph lol) but her name is Hattie, and I'm hoping to join in on the next performance of my local volunteer concert band!

here's one of those dashboards I mentioned! I don't usually do the border-thing, but i was very excited about pride since I thought I'd finally found fitting labels for the first time in a while (spoiler--they're already different. we'll come back to that later).

various crochet notes, and a pressed rose that I'd initially gathered at least a month, probably longer, before I finally got it out of the press and put it in. Though I was so excited for spring and to press flowers, by this point I was getting sick of taping them in lmao.

I was learning a lot about myself this go around and not doing much about it--i had to be briefer than normal to fit all my UB's and Epiphanies on one spread. If I'd planned ahead more I probably could have done one spread each and included more, but at this point I was just raring to start the next journal lol

I had an idea doing journal 2 to do the index on actual index cards, but I had been having a hard time with the execution of it. I had time to plan it out this time though, and now have these to show for it. Thankfully Leuchtturms have a back pocket!

And now the farewell page. I can tell you now I identified as a Demirose Lesbian for about 2.5 weeks until realizing during Journal 4 that I might just be more ambiguously Sapphic AroAce, though the microlabels i currently align with the most are Cupiorose. I'm not going to get too into that just now, but I wanted to be transparent.

(Though I will specify: I went from Lesbian to Sapphic not because I suddenly realized I do like men/masculinity (considering I just realized I never really liked anybody like that lol), because I definitely still favor women as far as the cupio side of things goes. I just don't want to claim such an important label for myself especially in such a confused position, and be at risk of giving people the wrong idea while I figure out exactly what I want and how. And I went from Demi to Cupio, or more broadly AroAce, because I started to realize that I had no fucking clue what romantic and sexual attraction were meant to feel like, and I'd been operating on some false assumptions lol)

Also, exposure failed me and I'm too lazy to fix it, but that book I mentioned finishing was Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon. And the hectic state of my favorites relates to one of my epiphanies, where I finally accepted that I'm more of a top-5-but-not-ranked sort of girl than a this-is-my-favorite-thing-out-of-all-things-in-this-category-ever girl. i've overcomplicated being indecisive lol

and finally, journal 4's cover:

fun fact number two, while I was finishing 3, I kept wondering why i picked this color for number 4. I knew I wanted the color, but I'd been intending to flip-flop between warm and cool colors, and this made two warms in a row. I went back and looked through 2 and realized that i'd initially intended to buy a different book to be journal 4 for that exact reason, and never did. and by the time I remembered, it was go time on 4 with no time to buy another. So my next few journals will probably be cool toned to compensate lol.

I also added the archive label from the start this time instead of waiting til the last--the idea is to try layering stickers over it, just to see how that looks. I also made an effort to leave more empty space in the hopes of in fact adding more stickers later lol.