Whitewater Gorge Floating

Why couldn't I have just stayed quiet? He lets Finley elaborate, acknowledges her with a nod and a flick of an ear. "I didn't mean to-" Offend? Be so vitriolic? Presumptive? "-I understand now." 

Then what could he say? That her previous remark had hit close to home, that the pain of losing a child would change you forever? If wasn't careful, every conversation he participated in would spoil like a corpse in direct sunlight shot in timelapse. The eyes are the first to go, then the tongue...

He wrests himself from what he thinks is self-pity. Nothing more. This was a conversation with just as many unsaid things as words spoken and left to waste away in the air. The inconsistency of it would unnerve anyone, but Colin has not known anything but that for a long time. So he walks onwards, mute, half-waiting for a dialogue to be struck up again-- the journey ahead would be long and uncompromising.