text: [Themes: love & dating]
  
  The cabin is identical to your memory, unmarred by time and struggle. It emits a peaceful sense of languidity. It's exactly what you need. A bastion of safety standing amidst the untamed woods.
  
  Garreth is nowhere to be seen. The bastion is yours. You find yourself doing the familiarly mindless and repetitive chores. You clean the fireplace, reorder the timbers and sweep the floor. It helps you loosen your muscles and relax.
  
  "Robert." The sudden voice startles you. "I did not expect you here so soon."
  
  "The time was thick with events." Garreth always brought out the archaic ways in everyone he met.
  
  "Can you walk?"
  
  "Better than ever," you boast. This place fills you with youthful vigor. You'll be reminded of your mortality soon enough.
  
  "Come then, follow me." Garreth starts to walk, slowly to let you catch up. He pointedly ignores your limp.
  
  "I've come for advice," you start the conversation.
  
  "Advice and passed time is all that's left of me."
  
  "I don't know what to do. It's again about my wife, Isabella. We had a fight, I couldn't handle my forgiveness. Her actions were too vile, too recent. I pushed her away when she was just opening up."
  
  "You pushed her away when she was at her most vulnerable?" Garreth managed to utter those words with nothing but compassion.
  
  "Yes, I am sorry."
  
  "Don't be sorry. You did what you did. You chose yourself above putting yourself down. While that first act was despicable, it came from solid reasons and will lead you into healthier straits."
  
  "I feel so wrong, Garreth."
  
  "Sometimes feelings point you to the wrong thing. They nag you on when it's time to move past. Other times feelings help you discover your deepest needs. At that moment you told her off, you wanted to do it, didn't you?"
  
  You don't know the answer. Everything is mushed together in a raging storm indecipherable to your mind. Still, what Garreth says sounds vaguely true.
  
  "I did," you reply hesitantly.
  
  "Then stop worrying about the past and start thinking about the future. You still love her, that much is for everyone to see. But do you find your love worth the struggle of regaining your trust, regaining your relationship?" His eyes light up in enquiry.
  
  > want to respond, yet your silence says everything.
  "It's alright, Robert," Garreths soothes you, embraces you in warm safety. "It's alright."
  
  "I feel like I just gave up. I feel like I've failed."
  
  "You didn't, my boy. You chose for yourself. You chose for your sanity." The embrace tightens with every word. Every moment you feel more and more as if you're drowning.
  
  "She was my everything," you roar into the void. "I lived for her. She was my love and my guide."
  
  "Yet your guide abandoned you. You're lost, boy. Let me guide you back to safety."
  
  You don't know what to think anymore. You don't know who you are, what you want to be. Among the trees you almost recognize yourself. Only one of many, broken and battered by the storm. Could you regrow? Could you let him take you to the top one more time?
  
  You had to.
  
  "You're right," you say softly as you let yourself fall to the ground. The journey left you exhausted. "Let me rest for a while. I need it."
  
  Garreth takes a seat beside you. "You know boy, there is so much of myself I see in you. You made the same choices I had made. You went through something no one should. You deserve better, something I never had."
  
  "Hmm..." A noncommital grunt escapes you as you let yourself fall to the ground entirely. The familiar crunch, the soft pressure of a thick layer of leaves, it all takes you back to that hunt.
  
  That hunt was something you needed. Those beasts helped you in some way. They pushed and pulled until you had no choice left but to go forward. They forced you to start something that now gives you the rest you need.
  
  As you close your eyes, you see that beast standing over you. You see yourself reflected back on those putrid teeth. They showed you the decay beneath your life. A glass house built on nothing but strained hope. It showed you the harsh reality that shattered the dream in a thousand little pieces.
  
  You're better now. You have to be.
  
  > So you stay behind, leaving Isabella as she'd left you.
  You rebuilt your life. The winter came. As the lands turned white and the winds cold, you refound your purpose in life. Love was something that you were tired of, a fleeting passion. Garreth showed you a better way. You worked for your people, lent your heart to every one of them.
  
  Sometimes you see your old mentor look at you, eyes split by an internal struggle. It was a struggle you knew all too well, for he is making the same mistakes you made. You're both so alike, yet in such a different period of life. You're not ready.
  
  The days fly you by. Every one filled to the brim with work and fulfillment. You see your work reflected back to you. Every hard day you put down makes your land just a little bit richer, your people slightly more prosperous. It's only a tiny amount, yet is enough.
  
  Soon the duke calls for you again. Your work impressed him. He wants you as an advisor, this time an official one. You see it as the empty road of vain, it would lead you back to your old self. It would make the fruit of your struggles undone. You humbly decline.
  
  The years pass by faster than you know. You're loved by all. It distracts you from your memories, happy and sad. After Isabella, no one captured your heart quite the same again. Many tried, eventually you tried as well. All failed. Maybe your broken heart was the reason for not succeeding in having an heir, maybe you were broken all along. It doesn't matter now. Your barony became your child.
  
  Everyone you once looked up to, grew old and infirm. Your knights changed faces, guards got replaced faster than you noticed. The world moves faster than you could keep up. One day, Garreth left his cabin, never to be seen again. The news saddened you deeply, yet you knew it was his time.
  
  It'll be your time soon.
  
  Eventually new reached your ears that Isa passed away. She became the duke's wife. Her death left behind a saddened man and multiple lost children. Her last wish was to see you once again.
  
  She had felt it all too.
  
  > The burial.
  So you ride down the roads you vowed to never travel again. You can feel it in your bones; they will be the last roads you'll ever travel. As you ride through your lands, you say your goodbyes. It'll be the last time you see each other.
  
  It rains. Your carriage is being doused by your child's tears. There is nothing left to be said. It's time to move on. You feel old, too old. The only things that you bring with you is tired experience, filled to the brim with many sorrowful mistakes. The world moved on.
  
  You go through the woods, the same ancient woods you've known your entire life. You feel as if it notices you, an ancient consciousness looking down one so young. You feel a connection. You know how it feels.
  
  The capital has drastically changed. The old walls you remembered have been expanded, rebuilt and expanded again. The city feels different, alive with frantic vitality. It hardly notices you, an old man depleted of energy. You move through it as fast as you can.
  
  Eventually, you arrive at the keep. Guards don't recognize you, forcing you to procure letters of admittance. Time has moved past you leaving you in obscurity. The keep itself had hardly changed. You make your way through the familiar halls of your past.
  
  There she lies. Time had changed her. Yet she held onto her essence. Your Isa was still so beautiful. She lies peacefully, only marred with a hint of sadness. She had felt it too. You lose yourself to her memories.
  
  "Sir?" a young voice disturbs your last goodbyes. She looks so much like your Isa. It's her eyes. She has the same eyes.
  
  "Is everything all right, sir?" she continues. She is so young, still uncertain of her adulthood.
  
  "I am alright, dear. Thank you very much. What's your name?"
  
  "It's Robin, Sir," a learned curtsy precedes her next question. It's laced in youthful naivety. "Are you Sir Robert?" What a beautiful name.
  
  You turn away from your Isa. This is her legacy. "It is. I knew your mother once, we were very close."
  
  Her eyes became bright with excitement. She seemingly forgot her sadness to listen in enraptured attention. She was desperate to believe her mother alive one more time.
  
  "It all started on a long journey..."