Dear Diary: Dinner with Grandma

Year 331, Twelfth Age
Leaffall, Day 23

Dear Diary,

I decided I needed to work with some friendlier ghosts while I'm polishing my skills and increasing my power, so I took Grandma Butterblossom out to dinner last night. She was my father's mother, and an accomplished wizard in her own right, and she's only been dead for three years so it was pretty easy to bring her back.

Diary, it was wonderful. I know, I know: I'm mastering the arts of death and bending the darkest forces to my will, so I'm not supposed to feel sentimental about the living, or even the recently-living. I know. But Grandma Butterblossom was always good to me, and it was really nice to see her again. She seemed really happy to see me, and she didn't object to calling me Grimbad Willowisp. She didn't even quirk her mouth when she said it, the way the kids at school do when they bother to use my name at all.

She's a ghost, so she didn't really eat; but it turns out that she could sort of sip from a bowl of soup and a cup of tea, and get the experience of the flavors. I told her about the rest of the family, and school, and my studies, and was just so nice (there's that word again) to have someone to talk to about all this stuff. Besides you, I mean.

Plus, she had some advice for the situation with Mrs. Puffblossom, and some general advice on honing my powers. Necromancy wasn't really her thing -- she was more of a generalist -- but she was still a wizard and her ideas were really helpful.

I have to tell you, Diary, this was the best night I've had in a long time. And when we were done, we went back to the graveyard and she let me put her back down. So everything's fine, at least for the moment. At least as long as my dad never finds out.