Blackfeather Woods I just needed a little off the top.

Maybe it was the blow to the head, or maybe it was that plus all the drugs he'd been abusing since arriving to the forest. Or it was both of those things plus his already unstable mental state—but all of a sudden things were both very painfully clear and so jumbled at the same time that it took a moment for Tit-Mou-Screech to remember how to breathe.

He sucked in another breath. And another. They got more measured, less gasping, as he returned to himself (whatever that means). Tegan was harassing him again; demanding answers, as if the ghost had anything close to an answer for him. He opened his mouth a few times in a fish-like manner, and then lifted his chin, exposing the scar that ran the width of his larynx.

Then, in that weak and breathy, opposite-in-every-way-to-Tegan voice of his, he sighed:

Eff youh ah here to kell me, 'den kell me, Tee-gren. There were dark rings beneath Tit's eyes, a hollow quality to his face, but the expression there was something perplexing (as if the rest of this had been a cakewalk for either of them), looking to be equal parts accepting and tired. He felt like an old man. He didn't want to die—but that's what he came here to do.

I... I remembah, Towhee tried. That was a memory he would've preferred never to recall again.