the melancholia settled into his bones, alluvial pain spiraling from a neolithic wound. lestan was able to feel around its edges with raw fingertips, but the scar itself was ugly with the infection of grief.
he had stopped talking, stopped even his half-hearted swipes at tangled fur. he slept and when he was not sleeping, he roamed, carrying the deer-amulet.
soon they would leave for the creek.
the mayfair was no longer certain he wished to go. he no longer knew if he had the strength to leave the sea, to leave the place where they had once stood whole. every time he tried to think of it, to push his mind forward the way he pushed his limbs/his breath/his heart — every time, he could not; he collapsed inside himself.
it was the unknowing which tormented him. the flashes of pain and light, the separation, the blackness, the waking. he had never been able to move past that moment in time, and he wandered toward it now.
all he wished was to be alone, and it struck him suddenly that he was not; annoyed, lestan veered toward the infuriating float of a tune upon the morning air.
tinged in the seabreeze was —
— was
he became immobile, staring at the golden figure dancing beside the rivers he had fished while avoiding the thought of abandoning this place to sand.
lestan trembled with a sudden fierce hope so violent that he was almost sick.
golden; dancing; gilded sea; doefire; seawind;
the talisman fell from his mouth. 
blossom! lestan cried, but his voice had gone weak and hoarsened to nothing with his frantic shouts.