The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3

by Beth Brower

“It’s messier than we ever imagined it to be as children,” he said. “What?” “Life.”

“Your helping me felt like…home.”

And I hadn’t realised until that moment how much I’ve missed that feeling, of someone inside your four walls watching out for you. The feeling that home isn’t just a place, but also people. I’ve forgotten it could be.

I so love to scribble on the pages. A fresh conversation atop one long since written.

He smiled sadly. “You have a humour about you, a good deal of natural pluck, for lack of a better word. A general devil-may-care approach to some very serious circumstances.” I couldn’t tell in the moment, and can’t decipher now, if he meant his words to be a compliment or a subtle admonition. “I make a go of it, when I can. It’s not my disposition to…what I mean to say is, I learned a long time ago that my happiness has to be separate from the things beyond my control.” “Admirable,” he said, as if he didn’t believe me. “Necessary,” I answered, feeling the need to defend myself. “Most of us understand that in theory, but we don’t do it half so well as you seem to.” “It isn’t my nature to choose sadness if I can help it,” I said, shrugging to excuse my failure today. “Gloomy days stand in their place, but there is too much,”—I waved a hand about—“too much of everything else, I suppose, to live under them.”

It felt as if it were…what can I say? A fission? An energy? All that mounting storm he carries about his person breaking in beautiful rain. And I thought to myself, This. This sort of battle, this kind of argument, this laughter when we realise we are saying the same thing—this is what I wish from life.

Does one confide in Islingtons? What exactly are their uses? I seem to be stuck with one of my own, so I should find out. Being a duke rules out certain possibilities, but I’ve a haunted photographer for life’s real problems, and scoundrel Jack, were I to need anything illegal. So the question remains…what does one do with an Islington? Putting the question aside for later study, I turned to generalities.

My particular specie of Islington seems to find great pleasure in treating our every conversation as if it were a fencing match. Subtle, yes, and with dignity as stiff as his collar, but a spar, nonetheless. I always feel as if I’m holding a sword when he’s left.

I didn’t wish to stand out before I knew what I was standing in.

“I did warn you that fate has its way with me, Islington.” “Yet I wonder if your mischief rules even fate.”