Ideas flickered in his head, coming and going too fast for Myrnin to even try to grasp one and keep it stilled in his train of thought. And if he did, they wouldn't make sense. He would try to untangle the threads of his musings, but the needlework was scanty; it would all fall apart and quickly fade away.

He was lost in his mutterings of madness.

Myrnin had been cured. But the Bishop disease hadn't been the only problem within his head. The hereditary traces of the illness his father had passed on to him were still in there, all too real one moment, and then seeming like an illusion the next. He never could trust it, really. All the disease had done was make his mild lunacy more pronounced and deadly. And it had brought out the predator in him.

But perhaps that was why he had been so reluctant to part this world when he'd obtained the disease. Because he was used to the unbalance in the amount of clear moments he received. The times when things could be comprehended.

Myrnin had been turned just a few years after the first signs of his father's disease was found in him, so he wasn't a complete loon like his father...

Long-quieted sounds of his father scratching on the door of the shack he'd been imprisoned in resurfaced in his mind, making his thinking slow and focused. Burned out emotions reignited and the flame caught. A feeling similar to rage warmed the depths of his chest. Myrnin was remembering.

His remembrances were never pleasant. For there was never anything pleasant to remember. A life of harsh, unforgiving, fate. A life of cruel, unkind destiny...

Actually, as far as Myrnin was concerned, he had no life. Merely existence.

He had now idea why he did it. No idea why he stayed alive.

Maybe he was scared of dying. No, that couldn't be it. He had welcomed Death with open arms several times in his long survival upon this earth.

Maybe he just didn't want to leave the people he knew. Maybe he was scared of what would happen after he left. Maybe he was scared of letting go.

Maybe...

But he didn't want to let go. He didn't want to...

Parting was such sweet sorrow.

Sweet sorrow? No. Possibly bitter sorrow. But definitely not sweet. There was nothing sweet in sorrow. Or parting.

There were too many people to part. Too many things. Too much knowledge.

Ada had already left him. And he wanted her back. He wanted her back so badly. Was she somewhere near? A ghost, damned to walk the face of the earth for all eternity, watching him until he joined her in her fate? Were all deceased forced into that afterlife? Forced to watch the living go on with their lives and forget? If so, Myrnin didn't want that end. He truly didn't. He wanted to stay on the earth as a tangible being and delay that destiny as long as he could.

He scoffed. Destiny was never delayed. Of all people, he should know such things. Destiny took Myrnin wherever It wanted him to go. It steered Myrnin in its harsh, unforgiving winds and threw him against rocky shores. So just before he would be dragged back out into the currents of Fate, he'd get a glimpse of the calm, sweet beaches that everyone else seemed to be living on besides him, wounding him deeper and deeper each time.

Myrnin's skin was perfect in its flawlessness. There wasn't a scar on his body. But he was probably more hurt than any man ever to walk the earth.

Enough of that. Enough of the future. The past. The present.

Thinking of such things always made his brain hurt.