Year of the Boar, Eleventh Month, Day 30.

It seems I have missed much about the House and about the Kingdom since I took to my bed. Since I never announced my pregnancy officially outside my immediate confidantes, I did not feel that I could enter a mourning period or hold a funeral and expect the other Rulers to attend. I have spent much time alone, meditating on the death of my child and on the war I intended to wage on White Lake... the loss of my child has served only to make me more determined to exact revenge on White Lake. Azusa believes that I should close the House and enter a traditional year of mourning but I will not... my child's death is private. To begin a year of mourning would be to announce his existence to the entire Kingdom and I cannot face the thought of a thousand messages of condolence or the onlsaught I would no doubt elicit from White Lake.
I held a quiet, unannounced funeral and laid the boy to rest in a plain corner of the family mausoleum, marked only by the presence of a stone bowl full of water lillies and a little toy samurai which Sasanuma carved from cedar with his own hands. Now that I am able to walk unaided, I refresh the water lillies every day, which I will do until the year is out and that will be my year of mourning; private and unostentatious... in keeping with the ways of my House...
Sasanuma tells me that his operatives have infiltrated White Lake and appear to be settling in well. I have not asked him further questions; it is better that I do not know although should the plot be discovered, I do not believe I am comfortable with the idea that Sasanuma will fall on his sword to protect me... Sasanuma... I suppose it was inevitable that I should acquiesce... In the worst throes of my grief, Sasanuma cared for me as if were already his wife, asking nothing at all from me other than that I allow his ministrations.
As I have righted myself, I came to realise how much I missed his presence when he left me and how affectionately I thought of him... We have shared a few tender kisses and he has pressed me for nothing further for which I am grateful... I have been sitting wrapped in his embrace often, as we listen to musicians or one of the poets... on occasion we have talked into the small hours of the morning and I feel as though my body were created to fit against his... though I see no end to the grief I feel for my son, Sasanuma's presence gives me the strength I lack...
It would appear that I have also missed the flurry of a visit from the Sixth Kingdom; apparently Princess Rani tours the Ninth on some sort of Diplomatic mission; Azusa tried to explain the purpose of it to me but I must admit that I paid little heed ... I do not really need to know why she is here, merely that she is. Azusa tells me that we must receive the Princess at Silent Thunder in ten-day or so once she has concluded her visit to Golden Harvest and from here she will go on to White Lake. It all sounds extremely strange to me; if I were making that journey, I would have come to Silent Thunder from Shimmering Dawn and then travelled into Golden Harvest but I suppose it does not matter in the slightest. In many ways, it will be better to get the delegation out of the way. Thankfully, Azusa is quite expert at arranging this sort of thing and so the only thing with which I will have to concern myself, is offering Hospitality... 

Year of the Boar, Eleventh Month, Day 20.

I cannot bring myself to record all that has passed during the past sevenday but I have forced myself out of bed because I cannot let it go unwritten that I was not able to carry the child to term and that he did not survive the early labour.
I see no need to dwell on the pain of labour or the hideous, otherworldly sound of my own screaming - I wish I could forget... I should like a return to those days when I felt numb but this... this is far worse than what I felt when Kenta was taken from me... when I believed myself still in love with him... I had thought that I could feel nothing for this child but when death ripped him from my womb with the cord around his neck, I wanted death to take me too...
I will write nothing further today but I did feel it important to mark his brief life somehow and to remind myself should I read this at a later date that despite everything I have felt and written about the child before now... when I saw his face... and when I felt his tiny, perfectly formed fingers on mine... I loved him. I did ... I loved him with a force so great that even had our greatest poets tried to write about it, they could not have described even a measure of what I felt for him.