I sat at the bar with my eyes firmly fixed in my head. I wonder what the world would look like through fire? Shaking my thoughts back into straight lines was never this hard. How can I keep my mask of sanity when I’m this alone? I remembered a time, a time I could watch and wait for my thoughts to swim in formation all on their own and wait for “her” to come to my vision and tell me where to go. “She” had showed me so many things, but she is not real. Back at the Inn “she” would talk to me, but not here. I need “her” now but “she” has gone. They have all gone. The Inn is gone and I’m alone. I was alone at the Inn. I rest my hand on the silver box that I have with me always. Do you see stars at the bottom of the ocean? What would happen if I was to become a mirror? I shake my thoughts again and check my eyes are still in their right place. I look up at the landlord. “What did you call me?” he asks. What did I call him? Have I been speaking? “I’m sorry?” I ask, or at least I think it is a question. “You just called me Renn, look you’ve been in here every night for a month and you keep calling me Renn. I don’t have a problem with you or anything but it looks like you have a few ‘problems’ maybe you should spend time with your family.”  That hurt, I don’t have family. But I do have kin. “Yes, I shall” I put money on the bar, take hold of my box and stand up. “Hey Buddy, I’m Alex, so what is your name anyway?” I start to walk to the door and look back at Renn. “If some comes looking for you?” I wonder what Renn would look like if he was a woman. “Kerion” I whisper but it was loud, everyone looks at me. “Erm, you take care of yourself Kieran.” He smiles the smile of man who is talking to a simpleton. “No, my name is Keer-ee-on.” He repeats my name like it has an unfamiliar taste and I leave.

The night is clear for the first time since I lost “her”, I need her but now I know how too find “her” again. I need to go back to the ruin of the Inn. I knew few at the Inn, but it was “her” home. The building is in ruins now but I know that bricks and mortar is not and was not what the Inn was. It was kin and kind. I know what to do find my kin and make the Inn the place of spirit it once was. I look up to the sky knowing I have a long journey back to the place “she” once called home. I smile the comfortable smile of a madman and walk; it will still be a ruin when I get there. It will still be an empty husk of what it once was, with little to no clues leading to my kin. So I walk knowing there is no hurry.

I wonder if any of kin know how to open my box. Perhaps I should have asked that many years ago when I was still with them in the Inn. “Inn” what an unusual word, maybe “withh” would be better. I whistle. I wonder if I should get some fish on the way, maybe my kin like fish. Maybe when the “withh” is rebuilt we could have a pet fish behind the bar.