Found:
Two days in Bree. Two very different conversations concerning all that has happened.
Elias was the first. He wanted me to talk it out, put my feelings and thoughts on the matter into words as a sort of experiment to see if it helps. An interesting idea, given how difficult it is for me to open up in such a fashion to anyone, but I suppose the notion of it being a strictly arms-length kind of thing helps somewhat. There's no expectation, no personal bond to make it harder. Just a man interested, in a distant way, about whether or not such an approach would work.
Regardless, he did offer advice. Doesn't everyone? Even me sometimes. He thinks that finding something or someone to fill the gaping void left behind would do me some good. A way to find my joy again. It sounds simple, but it's not. How does one bring colour back to a world of ash?
A person to use as a bandage to stem the flow of blood. That seems cruel somehow. That only serves to remind me of how very different I've become. Is it wrong to be angry with a dead man for having given me a conscience?
Never being one for drink, my turn-to's would be sex or danger, but I've no interest in the former - it feels wrong to fill my bed so soon, even if only for a night, and before his departure, I had promised to be less reckless. Right now, if I scaled a cliff or went base jumping, I'm 99% certain that I'd accidentally on purpose forget the rope and rush headlong into oblivion, although perhaps without the laughter that would have once accompanied my daring or suicidal feats.
The other, a stranger named Joadir, simply advised that I try not to let his loss drive my actions and don't allow myself to see him in everything. I understand his meaning, but it's another thing easier said than done.
I've seen him many times. He's not really there, I know that. He'd never be found lurking around my island, and yet... Out of the corner of my eye, I see him time and again. Here, in Bree, it's worse. For a moment, just a moment, he's standing under a tree, or waiting by a wall, stroking the nose of Steel. I look more closely and he disappears. He was never there.
It's not a ghost. I've too much experience of them to make such a mistake. Just a trick of the light. Or my broken heart playing tricks on me. It kills me a little bit more each time it happens.
I'd say that I hate it, but that's not entirely true. At least in those split seconds, he is whole again. In my dreams, I see him as he was that day, which is so much worse.
Maybe, in time, this will pass and I'll not see him at all. Would that be any better?
