Authors ramble: This fic is based on a part in the BOOK where Inman encounters a bear. They don't show it in the film and it was a moment of the book that stuck with me. Well, Inman encounters this bear and doesn't want to shoot it so he tries to just avoid it but it runs at him, misses him and plunges over the edge of a cliff and this is how the bear is described as it falls over the edge -
'He looked over and saw her break open on rocks far below like a great red blossom in the dawn light. Black pelt scraps littering the rocks'
I'm comparing Inman's memory of the bear with his heart when he finds Ada again (in either movie or book) and she points the shotgun at him and demands he leave her alone because she doesn't recognise him. I can't find the exact dialogue from the film, so I reluctantly guessed it based by what's in the book, so don't hound me for it, I hounded myself enough already. Oh and this is really short too. Ridiculously short:
'I do not know you!' Ada shouted. She held the shotgun aimed steady at his chest.
'I believe I have made a mistake,' he said hoarsely
Slowly he turned around, momentarily closing his eyes to brace himself as his heart exploded and broke into an infinite amount of pieces. He thought of the bear he had encountered, he thought of it as it collided with the rocks below the cliff; flinging open from all seams in a great splash of red. He thought of it now like the breaking of his heart - flinging violently open at all seams like a red rose flourishing into bloom; breaking loose of all binds holding it enclosed and cracking open before the sun, the redness of its petals spreading so quickly over the green of all the leaves surrounding it with the brown and pink muscle like the black pelt of the bear, littering the bones and arteries left inside his chest, left to rot away or be consumed by whichever hunting bird finds it first. He'll rot away inside and see which part of him dies first.
Is there nothing more painful? Days upon days upon months upon years of walking back to the only person he's ever loved to find himself a stranger to her.
Inman opened his eyes as his legs began to walk again. Back where he'd come from and this time there was no lady he loved waiting for him at the other end.