Post by Lissa on Apr 16, 2019 19:14:42 GMT -5
Jeryndi slept, and there was Ashton Moonrider, watching him out of violet eyes. Once, Jeryndi had seen those eyes crazed, in motion, at the heart of a storm of violence and power. Here, the eyes fixed on him, remained on him, observed him. Moonrider crouched at ease in the red-blown shadows of Tal-Kebii'tra, hands relaxed. His expression was less a composition of the elements of his face than simply its symmetry and its beauty showcased. "He's afraid to look at me," Moonrider said.
Someone else, further away, moved about the shelter, here leaning to peek at supplies, there stirring salvaged weapons with his boot. "He just doesn't like to look at you," said The Mechanic. Then, with a faux-thoughtfulness: "He can't be blamed; you're repulsive."
"Jeryndi 'woke' to the sound of voices around him.. He'd heard what they'd said. It took a moment to realize, to echo the words in his mind... It didn't happen often, but sometimes, there was a delay in hearing the words and understanding them... Tihs time, it wasn't so much hearing the words as recognizing the voices..... Moonrider's voice was not so recognizable as Sadhric's. Jeryndi had only met Moonrider the one time, and that hadn't been a meeting so much as a successful attempt at murder... So it wasn't Moonrider's voice that woke him. It was Sadhric's. Brown eyes opened to look at the figure that stood over him... He stayed where he was, unmoving, but his eyes moved in the direction he'd heard Sadhric's voice... It was a pang of fear that he felt-- seeing Moonrider here and now.
Jeryndi's eyes would find no Mandalorians, and he'd hear no other voices as he opened his eyes and sought the source of that particular voice. Tal-Kebii'tra was black edged with red, some shades that hinted at browns, at purples, save for a single pale bar of light that cut across the middle of the shelter and ended square as if the light shown through a doorframe. There was no comparable light at Tal-Keb, and at Tal-Keb there might have been Medren nearby, or Ava or Solomon, or clusters of exhausted Mandals who'd survived Um-Shara. Just Moonrider, and just The Mechanic, now. The bar of light from nowhere cut across Moonrider's left sleeve and elbow, and stopped just shy of touching where The Mechanic took stock of the place, bathing his back only in a reflected blue light too dim to do more than breathe around his outlines.
"He's awake," Moonrider noted.
"Hardly," said The Mechanic. "He's wrapped in death still, like you. I can see it all over him."
"Not what I meant, but it's clear why you'd be fixated on that."
"Fixated. Ha."
"This was a dream... This had to be... And it alleviated some of that fear... If the Force had brought him back from the dead, could it have brought Moonrider back, too? It was a terrible, evil, insidious thought that crept into his brain... But this was a dream. He wasn't wearing his envirosuit. He was wearing his every day clothes... And there were no others around... It had to be a dream... But he was on his feet in a split second, hand reaching for his lightsaber... Only to find it not there... The thoughts were racing behind those brown eyes. But he focused on Moonrider, staring down into those violet eyes. He didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say, even if he wanted to speak. It wasn't fear of looking at Moonrider... It was a fear of Moonrider being real and in the flesh again... But it was one he was coming to terms with as the miliseconds continued on-- he met the eyes of the one called Phobos evenly. There was still fear in them, but it wasn't to look at Moonrider.
Jeryndi burst into motion, in a flash on his feet, slapping for his hilt--
Moonrider tilted his head back, and that was all.
The Mechanic straightened from an inspection of the food stores and turned to look, going still. Red light flashed off of mirror-perfect Lenses.
Dust stirred with Jeryndi's furious rush, but the dust seemed not to touch Moonrider, and seemed to avoid The Mechanic.
"'Tyrantkiller,' is it?" Moonrider asked. Who he asked was ambiguous.
He was silent for a moment longer, eyes shifting to look at Sadhric. Finally, his jaw locked in that oh so familiar stubborn expression. "That's what they said," he said in a neutral tone. It left it unknown to whether he believed it or liked it or acknowledged it.
"Traitorkiller." The Mechanic's boots crunched on the grit that littered the place. Dust stirred for him, too, but did not settle.
Moonrider grunted.
The Mechanic did not come very close to Jeryndi, but together the three men formed a sharp triangle. "Do you know what I mean?"
"Yes and no," he said, looking back to Sadhric... "I was a child at the time... So some I don't fully understand, even with retrospect."
"'Yes and no' means 'No,'" said The Mechanic. "I don't sense a lick of 'yes' in you."
The smile that came was... Distanced. "What are you doing here?" he asked instead.
The black brows on The Mechanic's face knitted sharply. For a moment still and silent, he finally glanced to the side, but not quite at anything. "Your 'here' is different than it could be."
His body language relaxed... No longer defensive or aggressive... And he took a few steps towards Sadhric. "Are you you? Are you alive?"
"Of course I'm me," said the figure before him, balking at Jeryndi's approach without actually retreating. "Who else would I be?"
He narrowed his eyes on Sadhric, then side glanced to Moonrider. "And why are you here?"
Moonrider was smack in the middle of the bar of light. He laughed--a bright sound--and told Jeryndi, "Who else is going to look after him?" The Mechanic stirred with an amused, derisive grunt, and his boots crunched again on the grit as he navigated around empty sleeping pallets and canisters of water.
"Look... I know I'm terrible at getting the picture sometimes, so why don't you tell me?" he asked. "Why are you here?"
"This assumes an intention for you to realize a message," said The Mechanic, tone off-key, interest now turning out beyond the shelter.
Moonrider watched him as he passed into the bar of light and then back into the red-edged shadows. The figure of the late Protector strolled in Jeryndi's direction, at ease, without anything that suggested that he cared much about conversation. Even so, he did say: "He's going to rewrite the universe. Maybe he's already started. Guess what happens to you when he does?"
"What happens will happen," he told Moonrider, not looking at him... His tone was not dismissive, but something in it indicated that he did not want to discuss that... His eyes followed Sadhric. He knew this was a dream, but the Force was always with him... His eyes got distant and glazed as he focused. He focused on Sadhric. On himself... Listened to his own heart beat. Tried to listen for Sadhric's... Tried to feel for him, beyond the dream. Jeryndi couldn't call him a friend yet, but they were no longer enemies... For Jeryndi, that meant a lot.
In the dream... a reach for the figure of The Mechanic meant a loss of balance, a teetering at an edge, a tumble, a drop into dead space, and a very, very long way down.
On the edge of the dream, a reach for Sadhric Tlin meant stretching a hand out past the safety of walls and wards into the elements, where a familiar presence was part of them, a churning, swift motion of winds, both hot and cold, always ceaseless.
In a snap, Jeryndi would wake. No halfway stop. No basking in semi-dream weightlessness. One blink dreaming; the next blink awake.
That feeling of being snapped awake-- it woke him with a small outcry. He woke with his hand outstretched, his throat tight. It hadn't been much of a noise, not enough to wake those around him, but enough to make him aware that he'd done it. He glanced around himself, taking in the sight of those that slumbered around him... He glanced at his sleeping son beside him. Medren's face was peaceful in his sleep behind the helmet... With that reassurance that his son was okay, he laid back down to go to sleep again... And maybe pick up where that dream had left off.
* * * * * * *
The Meld... It had been much like he remembered. It had been much like he'd expected... Up to a point. Something had happened while they delved into the Amidi woman's presence in the Force. Looking for a way to wake her. Looking for her mind, her consciousness. Between the two of them, and grounding via her body and each other, they'd gotten further than ever before. They'd reached her, only to find her trapped in the cycle that had pushed her into the Dreaming. Contradictions every step of the day. Interconnected. Disconnected. So close. Yet so far.
But something had happened there, too. It had not been reflected in the Meld, but he'd certainly felt it. It was a certain kind of deja vu. It was a certain kind of echo that he couldn't describe for the life of him... That moment they'd crossed the threshold from the body and jumping across the expanse of the Mindscape, he'd felt a kind of anxiety... He'd suppressed it so that Ava hadn't felt it. He'd kept his focus very entirely on the task at hand... But it had been why he'd broken the Meld so abruptly after being 'kicked out'. He hadn't wanted that anxiety, that feeling of deja vu, to seep into her and effect her objectivity in trying to do this again... He didn't think that was fair to do to her, especially when they'd been working so well together.
Her trust and her distinct respect for privacy in not wanting to see what she could about him, himself, had finally given him an impression of the woman. Up until then, he hadn't really known what to think of Ava Azalee. He'd been given various reactions to all kinds of things, but she'd also not been emotional about all things so far... She put a new interpretation of the Jedi Code.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is the Force.
He'd never really understood the Code, but he'd tried... Now, he wanted nothing to do with the Order. Not so much it's members as it's organization... He did not want to belong to an Order as he remembered it. He'd promised himself when he returned that his family took precedence above all else. His body and mind simply could not tolerate the abuse that he associated with the Order in his last lifetime... Well, probably not that way. He could. But he wouldn't. He had more important things to deal with...
These were the things he thought about as he drifted back off to sleep...
* * * * *
The Between.
It had an ominous name to it... Why had he ever named it that? In the Dreamscape, he began to remember. It was... overwhelming... He remembered being at peace. He remembered his being woken from that peace. He remembered being himself, yet not. With no memory of who or what he'd been, he'd sought out his cousin to get answers as to what was happening that was not Between.
He remembered Vyxe. He remembered the others in the Between... And as he floated in the Black of the Between, here in the realm of memories that came from beyond the grave, he remembered other things, too.
Berem. He who Jeryndi had speculated had been a former Jedi Master or something along those lines... He'd come along at the right moments of turmoil to occupy Jeryndi's body to force Brenteel and Jeryndi to get along... He'd left a piece of himself behind-- that piece that Jeryndi still carried... There, in the Between, he'd learned more about the one who'd named himself Berem. He'd spoken to him. Sought him out after remembering himself. Force Spirits, other spirits that were not Jedi or Sith, they were everywhere and nowhere... But he'd been drawn ot Berem and likewise, Berem had been drawn to Jeryndi... There, they discussed in the Between what could not be discussed in the flesh. Berem remembered his life as a Jedi, but not much more than that. He'd been from the Old Republic, but it had been so long ago, he no longer knew his name. His sense of self was intact, though.... It had been an interesting and long conversation.
But 'long' was relative in the Between... Time carried no real meaning. All he'd known in the Between was time moved forward. One could lose one's sense of self in a matter of minutes after becoming one with the Force again, destined to be lost to the Between to fade into non-existence or rebirth. Or it could withstand the tests of time and stay its' true self for centuries, if not millenia. If nothing else, regaining the memories of his time in the Black and in the Between, he believed nothing ever really died... anything and everything had its' time and place. Anything and everything would be reused. It may take centuries to do so, but it would happen sooner or later...
As he floated in the Black, it seemed as though everything were happening in reverse... He remembered the conversation with Solomon. With others... Then back to a time when he was nameless and lifeless... And then back to life itself....
It came back in a flood. His final moments... The ones before. If he'd been awake, he'd have sobbed from the grief of witnessing his own death... How heartbreaking it was for Solomon to see him deteriorate like he had. The ultimatum that Sadhric had given him... The madness that had settled into him after the Black Sands... Sadhric had told him it had been madness. He had decided it was better not to know... But now, he was glad he knew. Or was he? It was hard to tell... It was a jumble of memories and emotions...
Like the snap back to reality within the Meld, like the snap back from his previous dream only hours before... He sat up in the bedroll where he'd been sleeping. In that moment, he had sudden clarity. In that moment, he felt closer to Solomon and Sadhric than he ever had...
He reached out in the Force. It was heavy-handed, lacking its usual finesse. He put his strength of mind behind it, tapping into the calm he almost always felt. He wasn't seeking Sadhric in the traditional ways. Not seeking his life force. Not seeking his mind. Not seeking his body... Not seeking to find the man known as Sadhric. No... It was a command. He closed his eyes and focused on that feeling of being close to Sadhric. Of how close he'd been at the time of his death and the days before... How close was Sadhric to Death now? Was he already in the Between?
He wanted answers. He wanted to know if Sadhric was alive. He wanted to know how to find him... As heavy-handed as it was, it was simplicity personified-- it was a command to the Force itself...
Tell Me.
But there was no response... In that moment, he realized just how Dark that had been. One didn't just command the Force. One could manipulate it. One could use it... But not command... He felt dirty inside and out. He was vowing to himself never to do that again... It had been a brief moment of desperation. He had to be a better influence, a better example, for not just Medren, but Marian, too... Marian wasn't Sensitive, thank the Force. She'd never have to deal with the various complications that the Force could present to a Sensitive... Those same complications that Medren was dealing with now...
Sudden clarity. It wasn't what he'd hoped... But it was still clarity... It was time to meditate. To recenter himself. To find his balance again.
(For reference: Regards )
Someone else, further away, moved about the shelter, here leaning to peek at supplies, there stirring salvaged weapons with his boot. "He just doesn't like to look at you," said The Mechanic. Then, with a faux-thoughtfulness: "He can't be blamed; you're repulsive."
"Jeryndi 'woke' to the sound of voices around him.. He'd heard what they'd said. It took a moment to realize, to echo the words in his mind... It didn't happen often, but sometimes, there was a delay in hearing the words and understanding them... Tihs time, it wasn't so much hearing the words as recognizing the voices..... Moonrider's voice was not so recognizable as Sadhric's. Jeryndi had only met Moonrider the one time, and that hadn't been a meeting so much as a successful attempt at murder... So it wasn't Moonrider's voice that woke him. It was Sadhric's. Brown eyes opened to look at the figure that stood over him... He stayed where he was, unmoving, but his eyes moved in the direction he'd heard Sadhric's voice... It was a pang of fear that he felt-- seeing Moonrider here and now.
Jeryndi's eyes would find no Mandalorians, and he'd hear no other voices as he opened his eyes and sought the source of that particular voice. Tal-Kebii'tra was black edged with red, some shades that hinted at browns, at purples, save for a single pale bar of light that cut across the middle of the shelter and ended square as if the light shown through a doorframe. There was no comparable light at Tal-Keb, and at Tal-Keb there might have been Medren nearby, or Ava or Solomon, or clusters of exhausted Mandals who'd survived Um-Shara. Just Moonrider, and just The Mechanic, now. The bar of light from nowhere cut across Moonrider's left sleeve and elbow, and stopped just shy of touching where The Mechanic took stock of the place, bathing his back only in a reflected blue light too dim to do more than breathe around his outlines.
"He's awake," Moonrider noted.
"Hardly," said The Mechanic. "He's wrapped in death still, like you. I can see it all over him."
"Not what I meant, but it's clear why you'd be fixated on that."
"Fixated. Ha."
"This was a dream... This had to be... And it alleviated some of that fear... If the Force had brought him back from the dead, could it have brought Moonrider back, too? It was a terrible, evil, insidious thought that crept into his brain... But this was a dream. He wasn't wearing his envirosuit. He was wearing his every day clothes... And there were no others around... It had to be a dream... But he was on his feet in a split second, hand reaching for his lightsaber... Only to find it not there... The thoughts were racing behind those brown eyes. But he focused on Moonrider, staring down into those violet eyes. He didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say, even if he wanted to speak. It wasn't fear of looking at Moonrider... It was a fear of Moonrider being real and in the flesh again... But it was one he was coming to terms with as the miliseconds continued on-- he met the eyes of the one called Phobos evenly. There was still fear in them, but it wasn't to look at Moonrider.
Jeryndi burst into motion, in a flash on his feet, slapping for his hilt--
Moonrider tilted his head back, and that was all.
The Mechanic straightened from an inspection of the food stores and turned to look, going still. Red light flashed off of mirror-perfect Lenses.
Dust stirred with Jeryndi's furious rush, but the dust seemed not to touch Moonrider, and seemed to avoid The Mechanic.
"'Tyrantkiller,' is it?" Moonrider asked. Who he asked was ambiguous.
He was silent for a moment longer, eyes shifting to look at Sadhric. Finally, his jaw locked in that oh so familiar stubborn expression. "That's what they said," he said in a neutral tone. It left it unknown to whether he believed it or liked it or acknowledged it.
"Traitorkiller." The Mechanic's boots crunched on the grit that littered the place. Dust stirred for him, too, but did not settle.
Moonrider grunted.
The Mechanic did not come very close to Jeryndi, but together the three men formed a sharp triangle. "Do you know what I mean?"
"Yes and no," he said, looking back to Sadhric... "I was a child at the time... So some I don't fully understand, even with retrospect."
"'Yes and no' means 'No,'" said The Mechanic. "I don't sense a lick of 'yes' in you."
The smile that came was... Distanced. "What are you doing here?" he asked instead.
The black brows on The Mechanic's face knitted sharply. For a moment still and silent, he finally glanced to the side, but not quite at anything. "Your 'here' is different than it could be."
His body language relaxed... No longer defensive or aggressive... And he took a few steps towards Sadhric. "Are you you? Are you alive?"
"Of course I'm me," said the figure before him, balking at Jeryndi's approach without actually retreating. "Who else would I be?"
He narrowed his eyes on Sadhric, then side glanced to Moonrider. "And why are you here?"
Moonrider was smack in the middle of the bar of light. He laughed--a bright sound--and told Jeryndi, "Who else is going to look after him?" The Mechanic stirred with an amused, derisive grunt, and his boots crunched again on the grit as he navigated around empty sleeping pallets and canisters of water.
"Look... I know I'm terrible at getting the picture sometimes, so why don't you tell me?" he asked. "Why are you here?"
"This assumes an intention for you to realize a message," said The Mechanic, tone off-key, interest now turning out beyond the shelter.
Moonrider watched him as he passed into the bar of light and then back into the red-edged shadows. The figure of the late Protector strolled in Jeryndi's direction, at ease, without anything that suggested that he cared much about conversation. Even so, he did say: "He's going to rewrite the universe. Maybe he's already started. Guess what happens to you when he does?"
"What happens will happen," he told Moonrider, not looking at him... His tone was not dismissive, but something in it indicated that he did not want to discuss that... His eyes followed Sadhric. He knew this was a dream, but the Force was always with him... His eyes got distant and glazed as he focused. He focused on Sadhric. On himself... Listened to his own heart beat. Tried to listen for Sadhric's... Tried to feel for him, beyond the dream. Jeryndi couldn't call him a friend yet, but they were no longer enemies... For Jeryndi, that meant a lot.
In the dream... a reach for the figure of The Mechanic meant a loss of balance, a teetering at an edge, a tumble, a drop into dead space, and a very, very long way down.
On the edge of the dream, a reach for Sadhric Tlin meant stretching a hand out past the safety of walls and wards into the elements, where a familiar presence was part of them, a churning, swift motion of winds, both hot and cold, always ceaseless.
In a snap, Jeryndi would wake. No halfway stop. No basking in semi-dream weightlessness. One blink dreaming; the next blink awake.
That feeling of being snapped awake-- it woke him with a small outcry. He woke with his hand outstretched, his throat tight. It hadn't been much of a noise, not enough to wake those around him, but enough to make him aware that he'd done it. He glanced around himself, taking in the sight of those that slumbered around him... He glanced at his sleeping son beside him. Medren's face was peaceful in his sleep behind the helmet... With that reassurance that his son was okay, he laid back down to go to sleep again... And maybe pick up where that dream had left off.
* * * * * * *
The Meld... It had been much like he remembered. It had been much like he'd expected... Up to a point. Something had happened while they delved into the Amidi woman's presence in the Force. Looking for a way to wake her. Looking for her mind, her consciousness. Between the two of them, and grounding via her body and each other, they'd gotten further than ever before. They'd reached her, only to find her trapped in the cycle that had pushed her into the Dreaming. Contradictions every step of the day. Interconnected. Disconnected. So close. Yet so far.
But something had happened there, too. It had not been reflected in the Meld, but he'd certainly felt it. It was a certain kind of deja vu. It was a certain kind of echo that he couldn't describe for the life of him... That moment they'd crossed the threshold from the body and jumping across the expanse of the Mindscape, he'd felt a kind of anxiety... He'd suppressed it so that Ava hadn't felt it. He'd kept his focus very entirely on the task at hand... But it had been why he'd broken the Meld so abruptly after being 'kicked out'. He hadn't wanted that anxiety, that feeling of deja vu, to seep into her and effect her objectivity in trying to do this again... He didn't think that was fair to do to her, especially when they'd been working so well together.
Her trust and her distinct respect for privacy in not wanting to see what she could about him, himself, had finally given him an impression of the woman. Up until then, he hadn't really known what to think of Ava Azalee. He'd been given various reactions to all kinds of things, but she'd also not been emotional about all things so far... She put a new interpretation of the Jedi Code.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is the Force.
He'd never really understood the Code, but he'd tried... Now, he wanted nothing to do with the Order. Not so much it's members as it's organization... He did not want to belong to an Order as he remembered it. He'd promised himself when he returned that his family took precedence above all else. His body and mind simply could not tolerate the abuse that he associated with the Order in his last lifetime... Well, probably not that way. He could. But he wouldn't. He had more important things to deal with...
These were the things he thought about as he drifted back off to sleep...
* * * * *
The Between.
It had an ominous name to it... Why had he ever named it that? In the Dreamscape, he began to remember. It was... overwhelming... He remembered being at peace. He remembered his being woken from that peace. He remembered being himself, yet not. With no memory of who or what he'd been, he'd sought out his cousin to get answers as to what was happening that was not Between.
He remembered Vyxe. He remembered the others in the Between... And as he floated in the Black of the Between, here in the realm of memories that came from beyond the grave, he remembered other things, too.
Berem. He who Jeryndi had speculated had been a former Jedi Master or something along those lines... He'd come along at the right moments of turmoil to occupy Jeryndi's body to force Brenteel and Jeryndi to get along... He'd left a piece of himself behind-- that piece that Jeryndi still carried... There, in the Between, he'd learned more about the one who'd named himself Berem. He'd spoken to him. Sought him out after remembering himself. Force Spirits, other spirits that were not Jedi or Sith, they were everywhere and nowhere... But he'd been drawn ot Berem and likewise, Berem had been drawn to Jeryndi... There, they discussed in the Between what could not be discussed in the flesh. Berem remembered his life as a Jedi, but not much more than that. He'd been from the Old Republic, but it had been so long ago, he no longer knew his name. His sense of self was intact, though.... It had been an interesting and long conversation.
But 'long' was relative in the Between... Time carried no real meaning. All he'd known in the Between was time moved forward. One could lose one's sense of self in a matter of minutes after becoming one with the Force again, destined to be lost to the Between to fade into non-existence or rebirth. Or it could withstand the tests of time and stay its' true self for centuries, if not millenia. If nothing else, regaining the memories of his time in the Black and in the Between, he believed nothing ever really died... anything and everything had its' time and place. Anything and everything would be reused. It may take centuries to do so, but it would happen sooner or later...
As he floated in the Black, it seemed as though everything were happening in reverse... He remembered the conversation with Solomon. With others... Then back to a time when he was nameless and lifeless... And then back to life itself....
It came back in a flood. His final moments... The ones before. If he'd been awake, he'd have sobbed from the grief of witnessing his own death... How heartbreaking it was for Solomon to see him deteriorate like he had. The ultimatum that Sadhric had given him... The madness that had settled into him after the Black Sands... Sadhric had told him it had been madness. He had decided it was better not to know... But now, he was glad he knew. Or was he? It was hard to tell... It was a jumble of memories and emotions...
Like the snap back to reality within the Meld, like the snap back from his previous dream only hours before... He sat up in the bedroll where he'd been sleeping. In that moment, he had sudden clarity. In that moment, he felt closer to Solomon and Sadhric than he ever had...
He reached out in the Force. It was heavy-handed, lacking its usual finesse. He put his strength of mind behind it, tapping into the calm he almost always felt. He wasn't seeking Sadhric in the traditional ways. Not seeking his life force. Not seeking his mind. Not seeking his body... Not seeking to find the man known as Sadhric. No... It was a command. He closed his eyes and focused on that feeling of being close to Sadhric. Of how close he'd been at the time of his death and the days before... How close was Sadhric to Death now? Was he already in the Between?
He wanted answers. He wanted to know if Sadhric was alive. He wanted to know how to find him... As heavy-handed as it was, it was simplicity personified-- it was a command to the Force itself...
Tell Me.
But there was no response... In that moment, he realized just how Dark that had been. One didn't just command the Force. One could manipulate it. One could use it... But not command... He felt dirty inside and out. He was vowing to himself never to do that again... It had been a brief moment of desperation. He had to be a better influence, a better example, for not just Medren, but Marian, too... Marian wasn't Sensitive, thank the Force. She'd never have to deal with the various complications that the Force could present to a Sensitive... Those same complications that Medren was dealing with now...
Sudden clarity. It wasn't what he'd hoped... But it was still clarity... It was time to meditate. To recenter himself. To find his balance again.
(For reference: Regards )
