Whitewater Gorge Floating

Derg's sad story reflected much of his own, the only difference being that Colin had left of his own admission; the church and his job wasn't taken from him. It had quickly proved to be unbearable: lingering in his own misery, taking the same wretched New England path every day, waking up to the dark stale air in his parsonage. "My condolences."

He knew, and he had been taught that despair was just pride in new clothing. That to let oneself be submerged in his own torture, one had to be sure that their misfortune was immutable. That God would turn a blind eye.

Colin turns to Finley. This felt less like a confessional and more like the youth groups he used to sit in on, only any sense of brazen teenaged idealism had been scrubbed away and replaced by solemn acceptance, the same tight-lipped darkness that existed so densely among soldiers out to war in a foreign land. "And yours, Finley?" He asks, gentle and inflectionless, though doubting that the militant woman would be as willing in conversation as Derg.