Some Days.
Some days he wakes up cold and stiff in his bed roll, damp with the dew of first light like the bitter tears of stars as they are obscured from view by the rising sun. On these days every job takes twice as long and is ten times as wearying and what little energy he has is expended on menial chores.
Some days what little firewood he can find is so wet through that it crumbles to dark mulch in his arms before he can even get it as far as his rudimentary camp. On these days he eats a cold breakfast, or no breakfast at all, and breaks camp with a clawing hunger and a violent mind.
Some days are spent entirely in silence as he wanders the very outer reaches of the land where the tangle of woods is impenetrable as stone, where others fear to go. On these days he prays for people, imagines a column of thin grey wood smoke rising out of the canopy, visible through a break in the stoic and uniform trees as it rises silky and elusive into the sky, and his dreams if he sleeps are of faces and voices that are fractured and incomprehensible as moths tapping against warped glass.
Some days he emerges from a Darkness bloodied and torn and sick with exhaustion and disgust, disgust at himself, his vocation, at those who have sent him and those he is sent to face. On these days he is immobilised, his soul and heart and flesh and bone completely severed from all and each other and no part of himself able to settle, nor work, nor do anything to quell the disturbance in his mind or the nausea in his heart.
Some days his task overwhelms him, making him sick with the enormity of it. On these days he shivers and sweats and swears and talks himself in and out of simply giving up and going home, and let the world be damned.
Some days he can't remember why he's doing it or finds himself wondering why he should care, what any of it has to do with him.
On these days all he can do is breathe and walk and hope to the Gods that he lives to see the next.