The green leafed trees loomed overhead and hung down. Even they had betrayed Stitches, even they reached their malicious and grim fingers down towards him to poke and pry. Each twig and branch picking at his brain, or at the very least, trying to. As these traitorous wood towers get closer, the road itself seems to shrink narrower. With Adso's Camp behind him and Buckland just up ahead, Stitches sat straight upon his mount and pats the animal's neck comfortingly, as he perhaps wishes could be done to himself, "It's alright, Bread." Bread would be confused, as he was not bothered by anything, but he's also a horse.
Midday already, this traveling business is no joke, it takes a while. Stitches had already begun crafting theories of how he might cut time, perhaps by choosing to gallop through some roads instead of Bread's delightfully calm and unbumpy trot. Though, he couldn't work his horse too hard. They had formed a bond, a friendship, and for some time it may be the only one he knows.
As they pass Buckland, Stitches doesn't even pay it a second glance, his mind wandering as he heads towards the bridge. Perhaps it's dangerous to keep your mind occupied while on the road, but there's not too much traffic. Yet, he can't help but wonder, and so he wonders about Taite and if she got his letter, he wonders about whether or not Dryn worries for him, and where Ulfey wandered off too. He felt a slight guilt, a slight responsibility for the unfortunates, Taite and Jorifir. This yanks his gaze backwards. He of course, is too far in his tunnel vision to turn back, but he does care. He had to find Dru, but what if he just left everyone alone, what if something happened while he was gone?
"Forget the cripple and the bear woman." Booms a commandeering voice to the left of him and Bread, and enters his unwanted companion that he cannot shake.
There again, the cloaked figure hisses his words to Stitches from under a hood, who does his best to ignore. This parasite was beginning to get on his nerves, but he knows better than to throw any sort of aggression to it. It's nothing. It's just some nightmare demon come to bother him during the day. With a grit of his teeth and a clasp of Bread's reins in one hand, he bites into an apple that his other holds. Still as he eats, the illusion pesters him, but this time, what it says actually makes sense to him,
"Focus on what you're to do now. You head to Forochel, and you can't be looking over your shoulder. You've come too far to doubt your convictions. If your resolve wavers for even a moment you've lost what you're searching for." It advises him, causing him to turn his head to look at the cloaked figure and engage it in kind.
"You're right..." Is all he admits at first, "About that part at least. I won't forget any of my friends...cripple, bear woman or otherwise." The hooded man is quiet to this for now.
Bread trots past the shire folk of Stock, which seem to hold little important to Stitches at the moment. This exchange is enough to keep Stitches from the usual dispel of such a boogieman: a sharp bap to his forehead with the ball of his palm. He leaves the cloaked figure be to walk in silence with him. Perhaps Bread wouldn't be his only companion on this journey after all, even if this one was slightly ill to the things he had actually even began to feel.
