Chapter Two
Raenyn Jyhl stirred the hearth wood, and when he saw the burning coals that had been hiding away, took two pieces of split timber and hid them again. He leaned close, almost closing his eyes, and breathed lightly on the coals to start them up, and as a few flames licked at the firewood hungrily, the boy backed away, and left them to feast. Then he pushed himself from the hearth and stood, dusting the ashes from his legs. He took a few steps toward one of the walls and looked out a small window.
It was getting late. He traced the light as it faded with the setting sun, and began to wonder where his father was. He looked out into the growing night a moment longer and then wandered off to take up other things. Raenyn could wonder and manage the cottage at the same time.
He traveled to a table, where two lanterns sat, and taking his time to light them both, took them up. He hung one over the table, and carried the other to the window. As he placed it onto a metal hook that had been hammered there, he gazed out the window again. This time he caught sight of a shadow riding towards him, slowly approaching as the night sheltered shadow.
Quickly, he ran from the window and went for the door, pushing it open feverishly. Standing in the light of the open entrance, he waited for his father to come, smiling with anxiety.
"I see smoke," said the rider. "A fire then, that means, and what a chill it fights. It's best you close the door to keep the cottage content, else you plan to warm the rest of the world as well."
Raenyn froze. His smile vanished. His breathing ceased. The rider was not his father. As the stranger rode closer, coming to the stone home, Raenyn looked at him with worry when he brought the horse into the house light. The stranger stopped there, to let the boy study him.
"Raenyn Jyhl, lad?"
Raenyn took a step back as the man removed himself from the saddle. His eyes drifted from the silver of his boot-bottoms to the glint of something else at the man's side as his cloak waved when he landed. Then he looked up, and met the rider's sapphire eyes. The man smiled at him wryly.
"That is your name, isn't it?"
Raenyn nodded slowly, moving away a little more as the man advanced. His eyes darted to the horse, his father's steed. Where was his father? It was then, when the horse stepped a tiny bit to the side, that the lanterns in the house shown something misshapen hiding beneath a cloak, behind the saddle, laying across the back of the stallion. It was a man, he knew, because he could see the bottoms of his leather breeches and the worn boots. He coughed, knowing who it was right away. Those boots belonged to his father. Backing within the house, he reached with trembling fingers by the doorway and brought up one of the wooden swords. The stranger eyed the blade carefully, and then his eyes shot to the boy again. Raenyn stepped forward a little in defiance.
"What have you done to my father?"
"Now listen, lad."
Raenyn wasn't about to comply kindly. "My father! What have you done with him?"
The stranger licked his lips, thinking for a moment, his eyes drifting. Then they came back, suddenly, making Raenyn jump. He gestured to the practice sword in Raenyn's hand.
"I'd rather talk without you so armed, junior Jyhl."
"I'd sooner drop you," he stepped forward more. "Now tell me what you've done with my father!"
The man regarded the boy with his smile a second time, and for a moment, did nothing else. Raenyn reminded him of his own childhood. The way he held the sword, the manner at which he would wield it when the time came. The tenacity of his soul.
Suddenly, he lashed out, catching Raenyn by surprise, and cat-quick, he stepped into the boy, and somehow, as he stepped away, he was gripping the wooden sword, flipping it around. Raenyn Jyhl looked down at his empty hands with astonishment, and then stumbled back into the house and closed the door hard. The stranger blinked, tapping the sword at his side, stroking his chin with a gloved hand. He stepped toward the door. Bringing the weapon up, he knocked on the wood with it.
"Young man," he said softly. "I am not your enemy. I mean you no woe, junior Jyhl."
Raenyn, standing from the door and looking at it as if it were the man, wasn't in the least bit reassured.
"My father lies dead, on the back of his own horse; a steed that you rode in on! Your intentions are without resolve."
"Wisely said, lad, but just the same, neither is your assumption," the man moved away from the door entirely, and stood between the cottage and the horse. He looked at the wooden sword once more.
"It was not I who had your father slain."
Raenyn had never thought of that, but the thought nonetheless did nothing to calm him. His father was dead despite that, and even if it were true, the man who claimed such was a stranger to him. Yet, the man had not come riding in eagerly, and he did not harm him when he for certain, had the chance.
"Who are you?"
The stranger grinned for a moment, knowing who he was, but the boy knew nothing of him, so his face went rigid instead.
"My name, junior Jyhl, is Drahmon Mohr."
"How do you know my name?"
Drahmon stepped towards the door again. "What uncle, boy, would not know the name of his own nephew?"
Uncle? Raenyn gazed down, thinking. His father never spoke of a brother, nor of a friend who could be such by years. His mother, whom he never knew, was told to him by his father, as well, to be without kin. How could this man Drahmon Mohr possibly be is uncle?
"And now that I'm no stranger, and clearly don't plan to do you harm, why not show a member of the family a little hospitality? It's as cold as old hag's heart out here."
Raenyn turned around, went to the table, and grabbed a knife there, holding it firm. He paused, thinking again. What if this man wasn't his uncle? What if he was? It was obvious, either way, that he hadn't issued any intent to hurt him. He was a safe stranger, Raenyn decided then, but whether or not he could be trusted was still a matter he'd not soon dismiss.
"Lad?"
Drahmon Mohr waited a moment longer, and had just gripped his sword handle when he heard the door creak. He let his weapon go, looking up. Raenyn pushed the door open, slowly, and met his gaze. Drahmon glanced down at the dagger in his hand, and took up the wooden sword. Then he stepped toward Raenyn with a smile. The boy tensed again, the knife ready.
Suddenly, the wooden sword flipped from Drahmon's fingers, spun around once, and as it fell, the swordsman caught it by the blade, never looking at it once. He kept his eyes on Raenyn, and with that, extended the weapon to him, holding the handle before his face. Slowly, it was taken from him, and holding it again, Raenyn looked down at the timber blade sadly.
"Let us go inside, lad." He set his hand on the Raenyn's shoulder as he started to cry. "You know well the news, but there are things still that I have yet to tell you."
He then led the boy inside, closed the door, and once seated before the hearth, told him everything that had happened, although he took to change some specifics to keep his cover.
"I was traveling for days to meet with him," he was saying. "I hadn't talked to him for years."
"Why?"
"Because I am the brother he wished he never had."
"Why?"
Drahmon paused to think of what to say. "Because our mother, junior Jyhl, was a woman without reputation, and that I defended her instead of run with him broke us apart from brotherhood."
"He never told me he had a brother."
"And now," replied Drahmon, "you know why."
Raenyn reviewed a few things inside his head. "Why was it you never visited before?"
"I was not welcome."
"Then how was it that you knew me?"
Drahmon wasn't prepared for that, but he was ready to answer him within seconds. "I knew your mother."
"My mother?" Raenyn was suddenly shaken. "You knew my mother?"
"I did," Drahmon paused. "Food boy, is there any at hand?"
Raenyn nodded and moved to retrieve the last of the dried meat. He set it on a table by the hearth, went back to fetch some bread and ale, and setting them down as well, ushered Drahmon to continue. The man did so, chewing on a shard of elk jerky.
"She spoke of you, many times."
"What was she like?"
Drahmon stopped chewing, and swallowed hard. He regarded Raenyn uneasily. "You mean to say that you don't know?"
Raenyn looked away, shaking his head. He stared into the fire. "I never knew my mother, and my father hardly spoke of her."
Drahmon smiled to himself. It was easy then.
"She was a beautiful woman, lad," he broke off a piece of bread and bit into it. Then he washed it down with a swallow of ale. "She was tall and slender, with blonde hair.silver eyes."
"Silver?"
"Aye, one thing of many, that set her apart. Ancient eyes of magic, boy."
Raenyn tried to imagine her as Drahmon spoke, closing his eyes. He had never seen a woman, and that the first he would view would be within his head, he was free to imagine the one most divine. He smiled, almost knowing his mother there, and opened his eyes.
Drahmon continued. "But to your father, junior Jyhl."
The boy lost his smile as he remembered.
"I had decided to seek him out, and visit his son, of whom his mother spoke of missing so. I knew where he had traveled to, to live and build his home and family, to start a life, so I set off. After a week, perhaps, I was directed to this cottage, and earlier this day, as I ventured here, I encountered my brother hunting. He was with another man, I think."
"A hunter friend, he met in the village."
Drahmon nodded. "Perhaps. But before I could meet with him, I saw that they were under attack. A band of brigands, I think. There have always been rumors of rogue hunters stealing prey, and I guess today, lives as well. There must have been twenty men, junior Jyhl, but that did not stop your father from fighting. He fell ten men before I reached him, cutting them away. When at last I caught up to him, he had fallen, and with that lad I drew my own sword and in my rage, slew what men remained! He never said a word.but I think he heard me promise him I'd take care of you. He died knowing you'd be safe, and I'd swear that my brother spent his days living and caring for nothing and no one else."
Raenyn was looking at the fire again, breathing softly, remembering his father as he had lived. He recalled his face, his smile, his kind eyes, and his warm embrace. All of that was a memory now, and all of it wasn't real. It never would be. There would be no more times, and no more teaching. There would be no more days nor nights of old stories. There would be nothing. Raenyn slipped into a silent depression, and Drahmon watched him, letting him mourn. Then he stood from his seat by the hearth, and set his hand on the boy's back.
"See him off in those flames lad," he told him. "For it is there, within that fire, that the same burning soul within him, passes on to you."
He moved from Raenyn and went for the door. "I'll tend to your father.my brother. Keep the fire going, and then get some sleep. You will need it, junior Jyhl."
Raenyn didn't hear him speak, and it wasn't until the door had closed behind the man that he realized he had even gone. He kept to the fire, his eyes burning, and for another hour he lost himself to the smoke, and the rest of the world didn't matter to him.
Midnight offered a bright moon to cast light over the forest. The sky held full a store of stars, and the evening itself seemed to dream. All was silent and still. As Drahmon Mohr took the horse through the wood, the dead swordsman bouncing behind him, he took to the night with great reverie. He dwelled in such things as the silence of night, the darkness, and the hobgoblins the mind would make from the smallest shadows. That world to him was the only one existing that held any place of high regard at all. It was all he cared for. The darkness understood him. The shadows shared his life.
He stopped half a mile from the cottage, where the brigands had been slain, and dismounting, took Raenyn's father from the house with one hand, and threw him into the midst of them. He gathered up all of the fallen, added wild grass to them, and with a spark of flint on the silver sole of his black boot, he set the mess on fire, watching it burn.
Drahmon stepped away as the flames grew, and heard a clank of metal to metal when his foot fell. Looking down, he moved aside to see the sword that Raenyn's father had used. He reached down and picked it up, holding it in the moonlight to study the steel.
It was a good sword, crafted at the cost of coin that Raenyn's father probably hardly had. It wasn't anything special, though, and Drahmon thought it better to add it to the flames then keep it close. But just before he tossed the weapon away, he stopped, and examined the blade again. Even though it was simply a well forged sword, he had in mind such a weapon for Raenyn, when the time came. He would need a sword like this one. He tore a cloak from one of the dead men, and wrapped the weapon with it.
Drahmon paid the flames a minute more of heedless heed, his blue eyes alive inside as they reflected the fire. And then he moved from the fire, mounted the stallion, and after putting the covered sword into a long saddlebag beside him, kicked the animal into a gallop and was off.
He reached the cottage late, taking his time to arrive once he neared it. He didn't want to wake the boy, whom he knew to be asleep. He saw the boy suffer when he first saw his father, and saw that sorrow take away all his energy when he told him what had happened. The days ahead of them would be long, and Raenyn needed all the rest that could be given.
Drahmon Mohr tied the horse to a tree near the cottage, and took up the sword he had wrapped when he burned the bodies. A moment later, he went inside the home. He hated the feel of the place. He could sense the emotions and memories that had been made inside it. It truly sickened him, but it was something he'd have to endure.
He put out the lanterns, tended to the hearth flames, and then searched the house quickly to see where Raenyn had gone to sleep. He found him in a small room, lying on a bed barely big enough for, lost in slumber, within whatever dreams he was apart of there. Drahmon moved close to him, set his father's sword by a table next to the bed, and stepped away. He looked at Raenyn hard.
The boy, as he rested, offered an image that brought back something in the swordsman's soul, pulling it from a pocket he thought long lost. It was innocence, he knew. It was purity, and perfection. Drahmon watched him rest a little longer, and then pulled away from the boy disgusted. He stopped at the entrance of the room. He could not let such things affect him. He would not allow anything outside him to stop him from what he came to do, and he refused to allow the things inside to gain any ground either. He could not feel like that anymore, anyway. He didn't want to, and it was impossible to even try if ever he felt like he did. To love, or to know it were without reason. They were simply something his heart couldn't handle.
Raenyn Jyhl stirred the hearth wood, and when he saw the burning coals that had been hiding away, took two pieces of split timber and hid them again. He leaned close, almost closing his eyes, and breathed lightly on the coals to start them up, and as a few flames licked at the firewood hungrily, the boy backed away, and left them to feast. Then he pushed himself from the hearth and stood, dusting the ashes from his legs. He took a few steps toward one of the walls and looked out a small window.
It was getting late. He traced the light as it faded with the setting sun, and began to wonder where his father was. He looked out into the growing night a moment longer and then wandered off to take up other things. Raenyn could wonder and manage the cottage at the same time.
He traveled to a table, where two lanterns sat, and taking his time to light them both, took them up. He hung one over the table, and carried the other to the window. As he placed it onto a metal hook that had been hammered there, he gazed out the window again. This time he caught sight of a shadow riding towards him, slowly approaching as the night sheltered shadow.
Quickly, he ran from the window and went for the door, pushing it open feverishly. Standing in the light of the open entrance, he waited for his father to come, smiling with anxiety.
"I see smoke," said the rider. "A fire then, that means, and what a chill it fights. It's best you close the door to keep the cottage content, else you plan to warm the rest of the world as well."
Raenyn froze. His smile vanished. His breathing ceased. The rider was not his father. As the stranger rode closer, coming to the stone home, Raenyn looked at him with worry when he brought the horse into the house light. The stranger stopped there, to let the boy study him.
"Raenyn Jyhl, lad?"
Raenyn took a step back as the man removed himself from the saddle. His eyes drifted from the silver of his boot-bottoms to the glint of something else at the man's side as his cloak waved when he landed. Then he looked up, and met the rider's sapphire eyes. The man smiled at him wryly.
"That is your name, isn't it?"
Raenyn nodded slowly, moving away a little more as the man advanced. His eyes darted to the horse, his father's steed. Where was his father? It was then, when the horse stepped a tiny bit to the side, that the lanterns in the house shown something misshapen hiding beneath a cloak, behind the saddle, laying across the back of the stallion. It was a man, he knew, because he could see the bottoms of his leather breeches and the worn boots. He coughed, knowing who it was right away. Those boots belonged to his father. Backing within the house, he reached with trembling fingers by the doorway and brought up one of the wooden swords. The stranger eyed the blade carefully, and then his eyes shot to the boy again. Raenyn stepped forward a little in defiance.
"What have you done to my father?"
"Now listen, lad."
Raenyn wasn't about to comply kindly. "My father! What have you done with him?"
The stranger licked his lips, thinking for a moment, his eyes drifting. Then they came back, suddenly, making Raenyn jump. He gestured to the practice sword in Raenyn's hand.
"I'd rather talk without you so armed, junior Jyhl."
"I'd sooner drop you," he stepped forward more. "Now tell me what you've done with my father!"
The man regarded the boy with his smile a second time, and for a moment, did nothing else. Raenyn reminded him of his own childhood. The way he held the sword, the manner at which he would wield it when the time came. The tenacity of his soul.
Suddenly, he lashed out, catching Raenyn by surprise, and cat-quick, he stepped into the boy, and somehow, as he stepped away, he was gripping the wooden sword, flipping it around. Raenyn Jyhl looked down at his empty hands with astonishment, and then stumbled back into the house and closed the door hard. The stranger blinked, tapping the sword at his side, stroking his chin with a gloved hand. He stepped toward the door. Bringing the weapon up, he knocked on the wood with it.
"Young man," he said softly. "I am not your enemy. I mean you no woe, junior Jyhl."
Raenyn, standing from the door and looking at it as if it were the man, wasn't in the least bit reassured.
"My father lies dead, on the back of his own horse; a steed that you rode in on! Your intentions are without resolve."
"Wisely said, lad, but just the same, neither is your assumption," the man moved away from the door entirely, and stood between the cottage and the horse. He looked at the wooden sword once more.
"It was not I who had your father slain."
Raenyn had never thought of that, but the thought nonetheless did nothing to calm him. His father was dead despite that, and even if it were true, the man who claimed such was a stranger to him. Yet, the man had not come riding in eagerly, and he did not harm him when he for certain, had the chance.
"Who are you?"
The stranger grinned for a moment, knowing who he was, but the boy knew nothing of him, so his face went rigid instead.
"My name, junior Jyhl, is Drahmon Mohr."
"How do you know my name?"
Drahmon stepped towards the door again. "What uncle, boy, would not know the name of his own nephew?"
Uncle? Raenyn gazed down, thinking. His father never spoke of a brother, nor of a friend who could be such by years. His mother, whom he never knew, was told to him by his father, as well, to be without kin. How could this man Drahmon Mohr possibly be is uncle?
"And now that I'm no stranger, and clearly don't plan to do you harm, why not show a member of the family a little hospitality? It's as cold as old hag's heart out here."
Raenyn turned around, went to the table, and grabbed a knife there, holding it firm. He paused, thinking again. What if this man wasn't his uncle? What if he was? It was obvious, either way, that he hadn't issued any intent to hurt him. He was a safe stranger, Raenyn decided then, but whether or not he could be trusted was still a matter he'd not soon dismiss.
"Lad?"
Drahmon Mohr waited a moment longer, and had just gripped his sword handle when he heard the door creak. He let his weapon go, looking up. Raenyn pushed the door open, slowly, and met his gaze. Drahmon glanced down at the dagger in his hand, and took up the wooden sword. Then he stepped toward Raenyn with a smile. The boy tensed again, the knife ready.
Suddenly, the wooden sword flipped from Drahmon's fingers, spun around once, and as it fell, the swordsman caught it by the blade, never looking at it once. He kept his eyes on Raenyn, and with that, extended the weapon to him, holding the handle before his face. Slowly, it was taken from him, and holding it again, Raenyn looked down at the timber blade sadly.
"Let us go inside, lad." He set his hand on the Raenyn's shoulder as he started to cry. "You know well the news, but there are things still that I have yet to tell you."
He then led the boy inside, closed the door, and once seated before the hearth, told him everything that had happened, although he took to change some specifics to keep his cover.
"I was traveling for days to meet with him," he was saying. "I hadn't talked to him for years."
"Why?"
"Because I am the brother he wished he never had."
"Why?"
Drahmon paused to think of what to say. "Because our mother, junior Jyhl, was a woman without reputation, and that I defended her instead of run with him broke us apart from brotherhood."
"He never told me he had a brother."
"And now," replied Drahmon, "you know why."
Raenyn reviewed a few things inside his head. "Why was it you never visited before?"
"I was not welcome."
"Then how was it that you knew me?"
Drahmon wasn't prepared for that, but he was ready to answer him within seconds. "I knew your mother."
"My mother?" Raenyn was suddenly shaken. "You knew my mother?"
"I did," Drahmon paused. "Food boy, is there any at hand?"
Raenyn nodded and moved to retrieve the last of the dried meat. He set it on a table by the hearth, went back to fetch some bread and ale, and setting them down as well, ushered Drahmon to continue. The man did so, chewing on a shard of elk jerky.
"She spoke of you, many times."
"What was she like?"
Drahmon stopped chewing, and swallowed hard. He regarded Raenyn uneasily. "You mean to say that you don't know?"
Raenyn looked away, shaking his head. He stared into the fire. "I never knew my mother, and my father hardly spoke of her."
Drahmon smiled to himself. It was easy then.
"She was a beautiful woman, lad," he broke off a piece of bread and bit into it. Then he washed it down with a swallow of ale. "She was tall and slender, with blonde hair.silver eyes."
"Silver?"
"Aye, one thing of many, that set her apart. Ancient eyes of magic, boy."
Raenyn tried to imagine her as Drahmon spoke, closing his eyes. He had never seen a woman, and that the first he would view would be within his head, he was free to imagine the one most divine. He smiled, almost knowing his mother there, and opened his eyes.
Drahmon continued. "But to your father, junior Jyhl."
The boy lost his smile as he remembered.
"I had decided to seek him out, and visit his son, of whom his mother spoke of missing so. I knew where he had traveled to, to live and build his home and family, to start a life, so I set off. After a week, perhaps, I was directed to this cottage, and earlier this day, as I ventured here, I encountered my brother hunting. He was with another man, I think."
"A hunter friend, he met in the village."
Drahmon nodded. "Perhaps. But before I could meet with him, I saw that they were under attack. A band of brigands, I think. There have always been rumors of rogue hunters stealing prey, and I guess today, lives as well. There must have been twenty men, junior Jyhl, but that did not stop your father from fighting. He fell ten men before I reached him, cutting them away. When at last I caught up to him, he had fallen, and with that lad I drew my own sword and in my rage, slew what men remained! He never said a word.but I think he heard me promise him I'd take care of you. He died knowing you'd be safe, and I'd swear that my brother spent his days living and caring for nothing and no one else."
Raenyn was looking at the fire again, breathing softly, remembering his father as he had lived. He recalled his face, his smile, his kind eyes, and his warm embrace. All of that was a memory now, and all of it wasn't real. It never would be. There would be no more times, and no more teaching. There would be no more days nor nights of old stories. There would be nothing. Raenyn slipped into a silent depression, and Drahmon watched him, letting him mourn. Then he stood from his seat by the hearth, and set his hand on the boy's back.
"See him off in those flames lad," he told him. "For it is there, within that fire, that the same burning soul within him, passes on to you."
He moved from Raenyn and went for the door. "I'll tend to your father.my brother. Keep the fire going, and then get some sleep. You will need it, junior Jyhl."
Raenyn didn't hear him speak, and it wasn't until the door had closed behind the man that he realized he had even gone. He kept to the fire, his eyes burning, and for another hour he lost himself to the smoke, and the rest of the world didn't matter to him.
Midnight offered a bright moon to cast light over the forest. The sky held full a store of stars, and the evening itself seemed to dream. All was silent and still. As Drahmon Mohr took the horse through the wood, the dead swordsman bouncing behind him, he took to the night with great reverie. He dwelled in such things as the silence of night, the darkness, and the hobgoblins the mind would make from the smallest shadows. That world to him was the only one existing that held any place of high regard at all. It was all he cared for. The darkness understood him. The shadows shared his life.
He stopped half a mile from the cottage, where the brigands had been slain, and dismounting, took Raenyn's father from the house with one hand, and threw him into the midst of them. He gathered up all of the fallen, added wild grass to them, and with a spark of flint on the silver sole of his black boot, he set the mess on fire, watching it burn.
Drahmon stepped away as the flames grew, and heard a clank of metal to metal when his foot fell. Looking down, he moved aside to see the sword that Raenyn's father had used. He reached down and picked it up, holding it in the moonlight to study the steel.
It was a good sword, crafted at the cost of coin that Raenyn's father probably hardly had. It wasn't anything special, though, and Drahmon thought it better to add it to the flames then keep it close. But just before he tossed the weapon away, he stopped, and examined the blade again. Even though it was simply a well forged sword, he had in mind such a weapon for Raenyn, when the time came. He would need a sword like this one. He tore a cloak from one of the dead men, and wrapped the weapon with it.
Drahmon paid the flames a minute more of heedless heed, his blue eyes alive inside as they reflected the fire. And then he moved from the fire, mounted the stallion, and after putting the covered sword into a long saddlebag beside him, kicked the animal into a gallop and was off.
He reached the cottage late, taking his time to arrive once he neared it. He didn't want to wake the boy, whom he knew to be asleep. He saw the boy suffer when he first saw his father, and saw that sorrow take away all his energy when he told him what had happened. The days ahead of them would be long, and Raenyn needed all the rest that could be given.
Drahmon Mohr tied the horse to a tree near the cottage, and took up the sword he had wrapped when he burned the bodies. A moment later, he went inside the home. He hated the feel of the place. He could sense the emotions and memories that had been made inside it. It truly sickened him, but it was something he'd have to endure.
He put out the lanterns, tended to the hearth flames, and then searched the house quickly to see where Raenyn had gone to sleep. He found him in a small room, lying on a bed barely big enough for, lost in slumber, within whatever dreams he was apart of there. Drahmon moved close to him, set his father's sword by a table next to the bed, and stepped away. He looked at Raenyn hard.
The boy, as he rested, offered an image that brought back something in the swordsman's soul, pulling it from a pocket he thought long lost. It was innocence, he knew. It was purity, and perfection. Drahmon watched him rest a little longer, and then pulled away from the boy disgusted. He stopped at the entrance of the room. He could not let such things affect him. He would not allow anything outside him to stop him from what he came to do, and he refused to allow the things inside to gain any ground either. He could not feel like that anymore, anyway. He didn't want to, and it was impossible to even try if ever he felt like he did. To love, or to know it were without reason. They were simply something his heart couldn't handle.