Through Breath and Sight - Chapter 5
#5 of Through Breath and Sight
Well, here's the last chapter. I'll do most of the author's note at the end, but as always, reviews are enormously appreciated.
I step over the threshold; and all at once, the putrid stench of decay grows overwhelming, clogging my muzzle and gullet. I double up and gag dryly, sharp pains biting at my lower gut, my eyes burning, and the familiar acrid taste of bile once again rising in my throat.
A familiarly cold, scrawny thumb and forefinger pinch down forcefully upon my muzzle. 'Please, boy, not in here. Contamination, boy. Clean. They must stay clean.' The lizard's high, thin tones once again seem to ring faintly out from across a far distance.
For a minute, perhaps two, I remain bent double, gulping dryly, my gut muscles taut. Finally, the bitterness in my throat and the pain jabbing at my stomach subside ever so slightly, and I manage to aright myself; and blinking the water from my blistering eyes, I glance about.
The poky little room beyond the threshold is windowless, and unlit but for the feeble orange glimmer of a pair of sputtering candles and the dim light let in through the door; but slowly, as my weary, stinging eyes adjust, the shadowy interior slowly takes form. The room is choked with furniture - tables, stands, benches, chairs, all pushed haphazardly together, leaving little more than a narrow, awkward maze of space to move. The furniture, though mostly of rough-cut wood, is of a fluctuating variety of heights, shapes, quality and age, and looks to have originally belonged to a broad range of different households - some are smooth, some are ragged with splinters, some missing legs or riddled with holes, some singed by long-dead fires, some so caked and blackened with dried mud that they might have been pulled from the gutter.
Along the walls, every surface is cluttered with various containers, as decrepit and mismatched as the furniture - bowls and jars and jugs and pots of clay and wood and metal, and in one corner, the splintery lower halves of a pair of broken barrels. A great many of the containers seem to be filled with something, though I cannot say what in the dimness. At another end of the room, a cupboard - a fair bit larger and considerably more battered than the one in the kitchen - clings to the wall, lined with various unsightly oddments: sharp, rude shards of metal; ragged fragments of sticks, poles and planks; a bent iron dagger gnawed by rust.
And in the centre of the room, three lengthy tables stand parallel to one another. They are swathed in shadow, the light from the doorway not quite reaching them, the candles flittering feebly at the room's far corners; and for several long minutes, I can discern nothing but a shapeless black mass heaped upon them. But as I squint through the dimness, my eyes continue to adjust; and, little by little, I begin to discern the shapes of three motionless figures laid out upon the tables, side by side. The first one, nearest to me, lies on its side, facing away from me, covered almost entirely by a sackcloth blanket; I can make out little but the back of its head - scrawny, sunken, and coated with grime-flecked, bronze-coloured fur.
The second figure, in the middle, lies on its back; and at the sight of it, I feel another aching lurch erupt within my stomach. The figure is, as far as I can tell, some sort of equine, dead a fair while. Its muzzle lolls limply to one side. Its skin clings tightly to the contours of its skull; its withered lips are pulled back from its mud-coloured teeth; and its eyes, half-closed, dirty yellow, sunken into its head, stare lifelessly at a wall. Its fur seems to have been dark in colour, though I can barely tell through the gloom and the patches of damp decay. Like the first figure, this one is covered almost entirely by a sheet of sackcloth; but peeking out from beneath its rim, I discern a pair of bloated, oozing buboes growing from the figure's throat.
And as my eyes fall upon the thing at the far end of the three tables, my breath grows short and ragged, the sharp pain clamps down harder upon my gut, and a fresh wave of hot bile washes up through my gullet.
In truth, I cannot say if it is even a single figure; it has little definite shape. The vague form of another equine head, half eaten away by broad black spots of decay, lies at one end; but the rest is little more than a mass of blackened, festering meat. Patches of damp rot glisten in the low light, and here and there, rippling white clusters of maggots, writhing in gluttonous delight, stand out against the darkly coloured decay.
Beside these tables stands the lanky figure of the lizard, scrawny fingers folded together, smiling cheerily as he looks down upon the shapeless heap of decay at their far end. Then, unhurriedly, he selects a small, chipped clay jar from a surface by the wall. Delicately, he tips it forward over the rotting mound; and I watch as a stream of more squirming maggots dribbles forth from the jar's mouth and trickles through the contours of decaying flesh.
Putting the jar aside, he clasps his hands tightly together, and watches as the fresh maggots burrow greedily into the putrescent mass, his face alight with an expression that looks very much like glee.
'Such are the wondrous mysteries of the Lord's work.' he says, not looking at me, his voice heavy with what sounds like a drawn-out sigh of wonderment. Extending a long, bony forefinger, he picks absently at the pile of rot. 'This stuff kills us with its fumes, yet these humble creatures will merrily gorge on it. Can we ever hope to be as hardy?'
He plucks a single maggot from amidst one of the clusters; and holding it gently between the tip of his spindly thumb and forefinger, he smiles warmly as he watches it flailing.
'All our pleading for divine favour...if any creature in this world truly enjoys God's favour, it's them.' he continues, his voice thin, warbling, faraway. 'A man can die in the gutter or in a king's bedchamber, these little fellows will find him, eventually. Famine and disease can sweep a land bare, yet these persistent little devils will still find a way to grow fat.' Delicately, almost tenderly, he drops the writhing maggot back amidst one of the clusters. 'Tell me, Brother, is there any creature that comes closer to sharing the omnipresence of your God?'
I stare back in silence. Lifting his eyes for a moment, he gives me another warm smile.
'Anyway...these two...her and him...' - he gestures first at the shrivelled equine corpse, then at the mass of maggoty rot - '...were here when I found this place. She was pretty fresh, in fact. The place reeked of the pestilence - I had to keep the damn fire going for three days before it was clear - but I couldn't let an opportunity like this pass.'
Slowly, almost lovingly, he runs a finger along the ridge of the disembodied equine skull at the table's end. 'All this fuss about medicinal theory and fancy recipes some royal toady mashed together in his kitchen - personally, I don't see any reason why an imbalanced patient shouldn't be able to simply directly ingest the deficient humours; it would simplify everything. I tell you, if Hippocrates had allowed squeamishness to stand in his way, we'd never have...'
Reaching the tip of the skull's muzzle, he digs his finger into the putrid heap. 'Anyway, I've been trying to work out a way to separate and purify the humours, but...' - scooping out a lump of thick, black rot, he mashes it absently between his thumb and forefinger - '...they're so difficult to work with in this state.'
A moment passes as he stares at the mash between his fingers. I hear a sharp buzzing as a fly whirls giddily about my right ear.
Then, wiping his fingers on his apron, the lizard steps over to the nearer end of the table, and smiles down at the covered figure lying on its side.
'But this one...' he says cheerily, '...this one showed up a few days ago. Stumbled in one night, sick as can be - never heard such uproarious vomiting. Shook dear Agatha up a fair bit - only time I've heard her scream, come to think of it. But a fresh specimen like this - a godsend, oh yes. So I thought, anyway.'
He wraps his fingers about the lifeless figure's shoulder, and with a grunt, shifts it onto its back.
And as he does so, my eyes widen, and I impulsively wheeze out a throaty gasp, inducing the lizard to glance up in confusion.
The figure on the table bears the tousled, bronze coating of feathers and sharp, curved grey beak of a griffin. Its pinprick nostrils flare rapidly as it draws sharp, ragged breaths, and a black layer of damp, bloody sputum coats its lower beak.
And its eyes, which are fixed upon the darkened ceiling, are, even in the gloom, a glistening milky white.
My heart pounding in my throat, I hasten over toward him. His claw hangs limply off the table's edge; I clasp my paws tightly about it and hold it to my chest. It feels more coarse and withered than ever, and trembles faintly in my grasp.
For a few seconds, I study the figure's avian features in the dim light - it is, without a doubt, Prior Friedrich. Leaning forward, I plant a gentle kiss on his forehead; the flesh beneath his ruffled feathers feels frigid and clammy. Ever so softly, he gives a weary groan.
I glance up at the lizard, who is smiling down upon me with a look of warm, cheery bemusement. I look back down at Prior Friedrich, his body motionless but for the hastening flare of his nostrils.
The lizard grasps the rim of the sackcloth blanket and flings it back. I choke on a violent gag.
Prior Friedrich's gaunt, sandy-coated torso is bare. Broad patches of fur have been picked away, and the raw, bare skin is crisscrossed with scratches and incisions - some of them mere scrapes across the skin, but most digging deeply into the flesh. Most are at least a few days old, and layered over with blackened, glistening scabs; but several are clearly fresh, and continue to dribble thick rivulets of blood, soaking the remaining fur.
From somewhere above my head, the cheerful, reedy voice of the lizard, once again, rings out from far away.
'Of course, I dare say it'd be a waste of time to actually make use of his humours at all, given they're full of the pestilence; but it's a golden opportunity to find a way to separate them.'
I watch Prior Friedrich's scraped, scarred, bloody chest rise and fall, rise and fall ever faster as his breathing grows thinner.
'No luck yet, mind. Getting the blood out's as simple as can be, of course, but everything else tends to get contaminated before...'
My eye absently falls upon the tiny, glimmering white form of a stray maggot, writhing blindly atop a broad crimson scratch across Prior Friedrich's stomach.
'I don't know why I bothered, but I did...' - the lizard gesticulates at a pair of long, deep, damp incisions just below Prior Friedrich's sunken breast - '...have a go at the spleen and liver. So I could say I'd tried it, you know? Of course, the damn blood just blended with the bile. I really ought to have foreseen that.'
Prior Friedrich shudders, retches, and lets out a dry, violent cough. Flecks of bloody saliva are sprayed out across his torso.
The lizard runs a scrawny finger through the groove of an old, half-healed cut just above Prior Friedrich's stomach. A globule of damp, half-clotted blood, glistening black, comes away on his finger; and he lifts it to his eye, scrutinising it.
'You see this? Black bile and blood just counteract each other completely. This might do something for a black bile-deficient patient, but you'd have to give them a solid bleeding right afterwards.'
I wrap my paws tighter about Prior Friedrich's claw, feeling, as I do so, the wretched, sickly trembling of his body grow more intense.
'And of course, with his throat in that state, I can't hope to get any clean phlegm samples in the natural way. I'll have to draw it directly from the source...' - a long forefinger taps the thin, bronze-feathered crown of Prior Friedrich's head - '...which would compromise the specimen, to say the least.'
Prior Friedrich draws a deep, shuddering breath that rattles hoarsely in his throat. I grasp his claw tighter, my eyes fixed upon his drawn face, his milky eyes seeming to sink into their feathery sockets even as I watch.
A succession of indistinct thuds drift through the doorway behind me. Above me, the lizard tuts sharply; and I am vaguely aware of him hastening light-footedly out of the darkened room. He sharply jabbers something as he leaves, but I can no longer even pretend to listen.
Grasping Prior Friedrich's claw, I watch him in silence. Minutes pass as he lies motionless, occasionally letting out the feeblest of sputters, tremors still racking his body. Behind me, voices rise and fall, my clouded mind blending them into a formless hum.
Then, quite suddenly, a spasm shoots through his torso; and lifting his head slightly, the elderly griffin, for a few awful seconds, unleashes a fit of violent coughing, so ragged and rapid it seems to rip his gullet apart. Then, with a tremendous groan of discomfort, he slowly forces himself onto his side, turning toward me, and I feel him return the tight grasp I have wrapped about his claw. And extending his other claw, he gently runs his forefinger down my face and along the ridge of my muzzle, then tenderly strokes my cheek.
'Bless you, son.' His voice, though reduced to little more than a rattling whisper choked with pain, has lost none of its warm familiarity.
He shifts his claw slightly upward and fingers the tear splitting the tip of my left ear. 'Have you endured, son?' he rasps. 'Have you kept your faith in the will of the Lord?'
Lifting my left paw, I gently hold the claw that cradles my face. Prior Friedrich tenderly runs his thumb along my muzzle.
'If the Lord has seen fit to cast us into the hands of Satan, we must take pride in the knowledge that we are to play a role he a plan only he can comprehend.'
He pauses. His coarse breathing mingles with the muffled voices.
'When that foul creature lays its cutting hands upon me, I...' - his words tail off into a fit of damp, throaty coughing, interspersed with short, pained, desperate inhalations. I squeeze his claws tighter; and swallowing, I feel a dull burning deep within my throat.
Minutes drift by. Prior Friedrich lies silent, his breath seeming to grow ever shallower with every passing second. The shapeless hum of voices continues. I fix my gaze upon Prior Friedrich - upon the damp black sputum still dribbling from his lower beak and the quickening, frantic fluttering of his nostrils - and all of a sudden, I realise how warped his face appears without its soft smile.
Slowly, I unravel my grasp from about his claws. He continues to gently cradle my cheek.
With another brief eruption of dull pain within my joints, I push myself to my feet. Prior Friedrich's arms fall limply to his side, and his body falls back onto the table.
I make my way about the table's corner, and stand directly over Prior Friedrich's head. I meet his cloudy eyes as they gaze upon the darkened ceiling. The room's oppressive stench of sickly decay seems, somehow, to have faded somewhat.
I tenderly run my paw over the ridges of Prior Friedrich's face, feeling the soft texture of his ruffled feathers between my fingers, the warmth of the flesh beneath, the hastening rise and fall of his neck as he breathes.
A burning prickle awakens within my throat and eyes.
Ever so slowly, I slide my paws down the side of Prior Friedrich's neck.
The muffled murmuring beyond the door seems to grow just ever so slightly louder.
Wrapping my fingers about Prior Friedrich's throat, I grip down hard. His feathers and flesh are soft beneath my fingers.
I clamp down harder. The edges of his neck tauten slightly, and he lets out a soft, feeble gag.
The burning in my eyes intensifies. The image of Prior Friedrich's face hazes over slightly as they begin to water.
The old griffin gags again, louder this time.
The voices beyond the door are drowned out by a sudden shrill ringing in my ears.
His beak hangs open, and he lets out another choking gasp. The sinews in his neck are rigid, and I feel his head shuddering ever so slightly.
From beyond the door, more muffled thudding.
His tongue lolling out, Prior Friedrich lets out a chain of ragged, desperate gagging, more driblets of black sputum spraying forth over his chest. My eyes burn.
I try to clench my fingers down tighter. The desperate choking continues. I feel the tears beginning to dribble down my muzzle and the gagging lump rising in my throat.
And as his head begins to spasm violently, I quite suddenly find myself impulsively releasing my grasp and stumbling backwards. The griffin's head lolls back over the rim of the table, still shuddering as he shallowly gasps for breath; and as his beak hangs open, I catch a glimpse, in the half-light, of the thick, shimmering black damp clogging his throat.
I bend double, my eyes to the darkened floor. Hot tears spill freely down my muzzle; and I choke thickly as a wave of suppressed sobs forces its way up my gullet.
Some time passes, perhaps. The ringing in my ears rises and falls. The voices beyond the door seem to continue, but I cannot muster up the effort to listen. The tears continue to burn my eyes; and now and then, a hiccupping sob erupts out of my chest.
Eventually, I glance upward. Prior Friedrich now lies almost but for his claws, which hover just over his throat, shaking. His head hangs backward over the table's rim; his cloudy eyes stare at the opposite wall; his damp, blackened beak hangs open.
Another moment passes, the ringing in my ears now piercingly shrill. Then I find myself rising to my feet.
I grasp the bony edges of Prior Friedrich's head. He lets out a feeble, graceless damp grunt.
Beyond the door, another thud sounds over the ringing in my ears.
My paws awkwardly fumbling a moment, I give Prior Friedrich's head a firm, solid twist.
A dull click sounds in the dank stillness of the tiny room.
Prior Friedrich's head lolls flaccidly off the edge of the table, swaying slightly. A thin string of black mucus dribbles from his left nostril.
My paws still grasp the sides of his face. His feathers are soft.
My ears ring. My eyes, still burning with hot damp, fix unseeingly on a black stain on the far wall.
Not looking down, I absently cradle the limp, sagging form of the griffin's head. I run my fingers through the warmth of his feathers and over the sharp, damp ridge of his beak. And finally, bending down, I lightly brush one last kiss against his forehead.
A thunderous crash rings out through the tiny room as the door is violently flung open; and for a brief moment, my head spins, and the ringing in my ears climbs to an almost unbearable pitch. The light that seeps through the doorway is dim and unimposing; yet it nonetheless awakens a sharp pain behind my eyes that shoots violently through to my brain, and I spend several long seconds blinking frantically before I am able to even glance up.
The silhouette of a colossal figure stands in the doorway. Its form is immense, its neck towering and thick, its shoulders broad and heavy, its mane long and tumbling; and as I glance down, my eye falls upon something dangling from its right hand...
I give one last, forceful blink, the pain behind my eyes flaring up violently. Brother Gregor stands over me, fixing me with his stare. The icy intensity of his eyes has somehow grown; yet they seem, now, not to penetrate me, but to gaze unseeingly through me. The rags about his middle seem all but eaten away by damp, grimy rot, and the pungent tang of fresh blood and sweaty horsehair that always clung to him seems to have faded - or perhaps it is simply overpowered by the tiny room's choking stench.
'They...' - he waves his hand distractedly over his shoulder - '...they...they caught it. All of them, they...' His voice, though still thunderously deep, has lost its steady smoothness, and shudders with a strange warble. 'They...they lost their faith.' He kneads the side of his muzzle. 'All those months, I...I tried to instil goodness in them, but...the Lord has seen fit to...' His voice momentarily tails off into a strange sort of low gurgling. '...I...I had to...there was no helping them...they...their presence was poisonous...'
I stare up at him, still cradling the limp head of Prior Friedrich in my paws.
A rawboned figure in a loose apron awkwardly nudges its way past the towering figure and into the room.
'Please, sir...' - reaching upward, the lizard grasps at the stallion's thick shoulder - '...please, you're welcome to stay, but I must ask that you come upstairs with me. I'm sure you understand, I simply must...'
Brother Gregor does not even glance down; his eyes are fixed upon something at the room's far end.
Brushing the lizard aside with an absent shrug, he passes through the doorway, and begins hobbling forward through the dim room. He passes me, and sidles around the central table. I hear the whisper of leather and the clatter of metal as his whip falls to the floor.
At the far end of the table, he stops; and in towering silence, he stands, staring down, over the mangled, decayed equine corpse.
The ringing in my ears, I suddenly realise, has not yet died down.
Ever so slowly, the stallion picks up the disembodied equine skull, coated with glistening black rot. He lifts it to his eyes.
Gently, he presses the bald nose of the skull against the bridge of his muzzle. And opening his mouth, he lets out a long, thunderous bray of despair. It booms out deafeningly in the tiny room and seems to reverberate its way through the very foundations of the house; the agonising trill in my ears intensifies further. The bray rings out from the pit of his throat, hoarse, baritone, ragged and choked with agony.
I feel a gentle tug at the fur of my forearm. Glance over my shoulder, I see the lizard discreetly sidling his way out the door, beckoning silently. I glance back at the stallion; he continues to press the sharp nose of the skull to his face, his eyes locked with its darkened sockets. And almost before the reverberations of his deafening bray have died down, he begins another, this one louder.
I hasten back through the doorway. The lizard stands in the low, twilit dimness of the main room, his bony hands at his hips, his scaly face drawn glisteningly tight with displeasure.
'Look here, do you know that one?' he says gruffly as he jerks his head toward the tiny room. 'You fanatical types are drawn to each other, yes?'
I stare back at him. Behind me, the heavy bray seems to have died down to a low, resonant groan quivering with suppressed sobs.
Glancing over at the darkened room behind me, the lizard shakes his head, absently drawing his thin, dark tongue along his lipless mouth. 'Comes in here raving, banging on the walls, shouts something about the pope, accuses me of trespassing...dribbling potentially infectious humours everywhere...'
He hesitates, and absently fingers his scaly chin. 'I say, do you, uh...do you think those two in there were his?'
I stare back.
From behind me, I hear the dull peal of shattering clay. The lizard winces, and squeezes his hands together in dismay.
At the far end of the room, the cat stands by the cupboard, her head down, her paws folded across her apron. A cracked wooden bowl lies upside down at her feet, and some pale, damp substance dribbles over the floor.
Behind me sounds another peal of smashing clay, followed by the piercing clang of hollow metal crashing to the floor. The lizard gives another violent wince, and claws at the sides of his head in despair. 'Aah, my work!' he groans throatily. 'Who does he think he is?!'
A moment passes. The sound of more shattering clay rings dully out. I watch as the lizard's fingertips scrape fretfully at his shining, scaly cheeks.
I hear a deep wooden thud as a door is flung against a wall. I turn slowly about.
Brother Gregor stands in the shadowy doorway. His eyes are wide and flushed with red, his nostrils flare, and his broad chest swells and heaves with deep, rapid breaths. His muzzle and torso are smeared with thick, glistening blotches of blackened rot from the decaying bodies.
The lizard at once hastens forward, elbows his way about Brother Gregor's immense form once again, and disappears into the darkness of the room behind him.
Brother Gregor stands in the doorway. His chest heaves. His reddened eyes drift unmindfully across the room. The tiny white speck of a maggot wriggles meekly in the middle of a wide black patch of rot upon his chest. The dull sound of hastily shuffling feet drifts through from the dark room.
Then his eyes fall upon the cat.
She still stands in the far corner, the bowl at her feet, her paws at her apron. And as she glances up, and the stallion's eyes meet hers, her thin jaw clenches, and she clasps her claws tighter together.
He advances toward her - wide, rapid strides. Her fluffy lips draw back slightly; her teeth are clenched.
Reaching her, he stops, and towers motionlessly over her a moment. She stares up at him, awkwardly lifting her arms to her face.
His broad hands grasp her shoulders, and he tugs her toward him. She lets out a long, piercing yowl, and her tiny paws claw feebly at the sides of his enormous torso.
He begins to shake her back and forth, his gaze seemingly locked upon a spot on the wall. She unleashes another screeching yowl, and begins to frantically flail her paws about her every which-way.
Then, quite suddenly, her left paw hits upon the corner of the small cupboard, hanging just barely within her reach. Snatching at it, she wrenches it from the wall; as it comes away, the mismatched clay containers lined up on it fall to the floor and shatter dully.
With one terrific lurch, she swings the cupboard at Brother Gregor; smacking against the side of his head, it shatters into fragments.
Brother Gregor stops, and releases his grasp upon the cat's shoulders, his eyes still fixed upon the wall.
He sways slightly; and with a dull crash, he collapses upon his back.
Beyond the outer door, I hear the sharp flutter of a bird taking off in bewilderment.
The cat stands by the wall, her gown waving gently as she sways ever so slightly from side to side. Her eyes drift aimlessly about the room, and her paws are clamped so tightly together I can very nearly discern the outlines of the delicate bones peeking through her fur.
Brother Gregor is sprawled upon the earthen floor, his muzzle lolling to the side, his face turned from me. Ever so slowly, I make my way toward him, and stand over him.
His eyes stare foggily at nothing; his wide mouth hangs slackly open. The rot smeared across his body still glimmers darkly.
A broad, thick fragment of wood protrudes from the side of his head, just above his ear. Fresh, glistening blood dribbles down over his face and down his muzzle.
Slowly, I lower myself to my knees, and sign the cross over his dark, staring eyes.
'Ego te absolvo', I murmur.
Hearing hastened footsteps, I glance up. The lizard stands just before the doorway. His scrawny hands are cupped loosely together, and I discern a thick white mass of maggots writhing between his fingers, occasionally dribbling between them.
He stands, staring, in motionless, wide-eyed silence for a moment.
He turns about, and hastens back into the darkened room. I glance up at the cat. She still sways gently, her gaze still drifting, her paws now folded across her chest.
The lizard hurries out of the darkened room, his eyes wide with merry keenness. A long, grimy shard of torn metal, tapering into a sharp, rough tip, is clutched in his right hand.
'Perfect, perfect.' he mutters as he kneels down by Brother Gregor's lolling head, his voice alight with glee. 'Come, boy, hold him still; if I can get him open now, I might make a clean extraction of the organs.'
I glance back up at the cat. She still sways, and her eyes still stare. Ever so faintly, I discern a distorted tune buzzing from deep within her throat.
'Come, boy.' says the lizard sharply, his eyes fixed upon Brother Gregor's motionless body as he delicately fingers the rough shard. A maggot crawls slowly along the ridge between his thumb and forefinger; another writhes its way down the back of his hand. 'I need this to be precise.'
I feel myself meekly pressing my paws down upon the burly edges of Brother Gregor's immense torso. The receding warmth of his body still glows through the short, coarse fur.
Ever so delicately, the lizard balances the shard's jagged tip at the top of the stallion's broad chest, just beneath his clavicle.
I glance up at the outside door, which hangs slightly ajar. The dim greyness of twilight is quickly giving way to the heavy blackness of night.
Beneath me, I hear the damp squelch and soft crackle of metal delicately piercing flesh.
Swallowing slightly, I feel a gentle tickle in my throat.
Don't judge. By my standards, this was finished quickly.
I'm not certain I'm entirely happy with the ending, but this was how I'd always planned it, and I really feel like pushing it forward would just result in it being contrived. Anyway, I have a bunch of other stuff I'd like to get on to. But I'm quite open to any criticism or praise you may have.