Weeks are passing without our quest to advance in the slightest. This huge fortress of stone unveils its qualities and its dangers. Of the dangers a wound burning still from some unknown poison on low on my jaw is bound to remind a while longer.

Veryacano is searching council with the dwarfs at times for long –perhaps some that would not welcome me in their presence- or prefers to vanish alone and silent. A feeling I could not explain urges me to try to find a way south, where the darker depths of this cave lay their unwelcoming night.

I returned to where it began.

Not to Ost Barandor where first we met, but to Far Chetwood where I first realised how I felt for that strange, fey and often grouchy man.

I returned to where it first began in order to end it.

It was dark when I arrived. Peaceful. I remembered all that was, then, all that had been. I remembered how I used to feel here, how I would look forward to his visits. I remembered how much it hurt the first time he broke my heart and I knew... I knew that it was nothing compared to this.

There are answers in the silence for those who know to listen. All those little pauses between words, all the things we choose not to speak of or, for some reason, cannot, all the things we fear to vocalise hang in the air like shapes in mist. They can be seen, they can be felt, they can be heard. All we need do is open ourselves to them, to let ourselves know.