Two weeks after the courtyard morning, everything was different, and nothing was simple; both of those things were true at the same time without canceling each other out.
That was what I had not understood about this part. I had understood survival. Survival had a clear logic. Stay alive. Gather evidence. Come back. Execute. The steps were hard, but they were steps, and each step had a shape you could follow.
This did not have steps.
This was just life. Resuming. In all the complicated texture of it.
Damon and I were not the same as before. We were something new that did not have a name yet, something that was built from what we had been and what the five years had made us separately and what the past weeks had made us together, and it was still being built, visibly, without the preten
