The snow began in earnest this afternoon. Proper snow. Not the tentative dusting or icy sleet this city often endures, but thick, silent flakes blanketing everything, muffling the city's usual cacophony into a soft, deep hush. Looking out the window is like peering into a different world – streets softened, lights haloed, the frantic pace brought to a standstill. It’s beautiful, undeniably. It reminds me of deeper, quieter winters from centuries past, in lands where snow wasn’t an inconvenience measured in delayed trains, but a fundamental reality dictating survival.

  This quiet… it breeds reflection. The world outside is paused, buried under a layer of transient white, and it makes the long, unchanging stretch of my own existence feel starker. Why here? Why this relentless, churning island, so far from the green forests and ancient stones where my story truly began? I rarely allow myself to dwell on the 'how' or the 'why'. But tonight, with the world outside silenced, perhaps it’s worth tracing a few threads, if only for this page. No one else will ever read it, after all.

  My first memories are of a place steeped in magic, where the veil between worlds was thin, and power flowed as readily as water. Under stars that seem subtly shifted now, or perhaps it's just my memory. I learned the old ways, the deep ways. This… condition… this temporal stasis that holds me at 21 winters while the world spins on… it wasn't a gift. More like an unforeseen consequence, a price paid for reaching too far, too fast, for knowledge best left undisturbed. Immortality is less a divine blessing, more a protracted lesson in loss, watching eras fade like watercolor in rain.

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  I wandered for a long time. Centuries blur. Continents shift in importance. I saw pyramids rise, empires crumble, philosophies bloom and wither. Paris knew me in splendor and squalor; Prague holds secrets I shared only with the Vltava's currents; Alexandria's dust still feels familiar. I didn't consciously choose this place, this New World. I followed whispers, currents of energy, sometimes fled situations best forgotten.

  But Manhattan… even when it was Nieuw Amsterdam, a raw, muddy outpost clinging to the edge of a vast wilderness, there was something here. A convergence. Lines of power, both human and arcane, intersecting with a chaotic, untamed vitality. It felt like a place where one could get lost. Or found. Or utterly reinvented. I arrived seeking anonymity, initially. Found… something else. A place that, despite its relentless changes, somehow endures. A place that mirrors my own condition, perhaps. Constantly tearing down and rebuilding, yet fundamentally the same underneath.

  Kept the windowpane clear with a gentle warmth charm. Watching the snow pile up on fire escapes and ledges is mesmerizing. The apartment is snug. The radiator offers its usual groans and hisses, a familiar mechanical heartbeat against the storm's silence.

  A good night for this, perhaps. And for coffee. The quiet seems to demand it.

  Lyra