whatnots

Close. Edward Little is close to death, freezing, starving, a hollowed out corpse which is somehow still breathing and blinking, but not much else. All around him is death. His fallen men. His fallen friends. The things that they did.

Why is he still here? Why, despite everything, does his consciousness cling on, refusing to cease? He might have been sitting here for weeks at this point, not moving, not speaking, slowly, slowly wasting away.

He’s close, though. Smoothly slipping towards death, not fighting it.

In the crystalline quiet, he thinks of George and of John. George, who was almost swept away with the mutineers, but who thankfully realised what scum they are the day John Irving, left for dead by Hickey, appeared in camp, covered in dried blood and saved only (he said) by God’s grace. They’d all been separated, and Edward isn’t sure where they are. He can’t remember them leaving, but he knows they wouldn’t have left him by choice.

He hopes, wherever they are, they’re together.