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For R, by request.
When he understood the ache that seeped into his bones day by day for what it was, he felt relief that he had given himself not entirely to cynicism: small stirrings of curiosity the proof were of that.
The boy who came to him in the swamps—glad he would be to leave soon that stink behind!—completed the curiosity. By it driven to see what the boy would, might, become, he began to teach again.
Uncertain of the boy he was still.
No time left to do. Only try.
900 years, and death came hard on each of them.
When he understood the ache that seeped into his bones day by day for what it was, he felt relief that he had given himself not entirely to cynicism: small stirrings of curiosity the proof were of that.
The boy who came to him in the swamps—glad he would be to leave soon that stink behind!—completed the curiosity. By it driven to see what the boy would, might, become, he began to teach again.
Uncertain of the boy he was still.
No time left to do. Only try.
900 years, and death came hard on each of them.
