Author’s Note: This piece was shaped with a little help from AI. It provided assistance on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written, and gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there.

As if it mattered that it was nearly forty years ago. 

The afternoon light shines through the cracks of a curtain to set fire to the misty blueish gray ring within a distant eye. The rays of golden sunshine catch as well in the pipe-weed smoke that fills the room, another vice dedicated to the erasure of any kind of negative emotion.

As if it could simply work like that.

“Boy!” shouted a voice, rousing the child from his nap. The warm sun and the creaking cart and the sounds of the horse had lulled him to sleep. It was a big day, for some reason, he couldn’t remember. He sleepily rubbed his eyes and stretched. He had left home with his father for something; waking up much earlier than normal.

Stitches finds himself younger, and on his knees within a cluster of trees. His hands are red. His knife is red. The corpse of a maimed doe paints the ground below. His breath is slow, he feels calm, and in a way, even happy. Footsteps behind him alert him to turn his head. Another adolescent approaches him, breathing shakily as she addresses him. Her hair is red like a sunset, and down to her lower back. Her skin pale and fair, offset with greatly wide and colorful green eyes.

Stitches slowly opens the door of The Prancing Pony, as though the task itself is difficult. Wincingly, he reaches his right hand to his left shoulder to the site of the new crater in his flesh, and tenderly rubs it to submission. After the throbbing subsides he ambles towards the bar, eyes meeting with whoever might be tending it this early in the morning. He flashes a gentle smile, but keeps his eyes down when he orders. Not his proudest moment, nor his most prideful order, to be honest.

The door to the quaint little hut swings open without care or concern, slamming against the hard wall on the left and shattering a few more splinters off of it. The door itself already has noticeable cracks in it, enough to see the inside from out and the outside from in. Stitches steps in after abusing the wooden panel, soaked in rainwater and carrying a bottle in one hand. He hiccups and closes the door the other way.

"Just take another step. Sometimes, that's all you can do, my sunshine. Is to just keep stepping."