Reach down your hand in your pocket, pull out some hope for me. It's been a long day (always). Long Day, Matchbox Twenty.
He could see strips of light between his fingers as he cradled his head between his hands, and he closed them into fists over his eyes to block it out.
It had been six days since they had buried Mountstrider and tried to return to their work on the human essences only to be bogged down yet again, and he couldn't see any light now.
"I thought I would find you out here, slacking."
"Leave me be, Rosethorn."
"I would, gladly, but - if you haven't noticed - there is still this thing called work to do around here and I had assumed we wished to deal with that before we relaxed."
He told him exactly where he could shove her assumptions.
"Oh, isn't that noble of you."
"Xiyun is dead," he snapped, feeling the shock of his temper even as he glared across the garden at the woman who was prodding at him. "None of us have the experience he did, none of us have the full comprehension of the work that came before, we don't have full access to his notes, we cannot... we cannot do this without him."
"We have three years of experience, we learned everything he could have taught us, we can get a translator for the notes, you fool, and we will do this because of him. He didn't do all this work for us to give up."
Her dark eyes shone with passion as she stepped forward and pulled him close to her. "We can do this together, Crane. We just need to stick to it."
He leaned forward to set his forehead against hers. And even though his eyes were closed, he could still see the shine of daylight.