(no subject)

It's over. She's gone. There's no reason to stay.

And yet, where would he go that wouldn't remind him of her?

But he's been in and around Vale too long already. He can't settle. The world needs him.

Above all, he can't stop. The world needs him. Perhaps not as much as it did five years ago, but it needs him.

He stands in the pass that leads to... whatever Mount Aleph has become. If he remembers right, the Boulder that marked the official boundary used to be right there. From here, he can see most of the village - but not the house where she spent her last weeks, nor the field where they buried her trapped her.

And yet, he thinks he can hear her here, feel her here. Feel her telling him to go, to be free...