Stone Circle But I'm still learning.

When Gunnar returned that evening, he felt the life counting down through every timed word he spoke. His soul turned to a rotting corpse, taken away and scavenged by every mistake he'd made, and every word Gunnar spoke to fix it.
For him.


No words would fix it. Nothing came out. Only the seeping cold along his skin and spine, and that slathered burn along his skin that ate away at his flesh, all to remind him that it would make him nothing. He'd done this. He'd severed this. Every day of Gunnar's absence, he'd spent in an unsaid relief, as if he'd return with a fix. That this could be fixed.


In those moments, Bonario knew he'd betrayed himself of everything he'd tried to give himself. That he knew nothing. That he'd done nothing. Was nothing.


When Gunnar passed him on that day, he understood then that he was no more than a boy in the skin of a figure not his own. When he'd not known what it was like to be a boy before.


Every hour after that was spent watching the blades of dry grasses on a sulking ground, wondering how he stood there, and how long before he no longer could. Was there anything he knew?