"But those are the sorts of creatures we are," Oliver told himself, knowing that he was no different to Greeves. A sudden malicious impulse, and he might have done the same, and he might have forgotten his honour in making use of the cruelty that he had so inflicted. The way the years warped him, it would not have surprised him to catch himself in that very act.
Two little pine saplings, covered in snow, were beginning to shoot up out of the little square where Oliver's hut had once sat. They made use of the ashes that he had left behind, and reclaimed something for themselves. Oliver thought there to be some kind of poetry in that, some kind of inspiration that he could draw from, but he didn't know what, and he fled from that site soon enough, hounding his way up the steep mountain track, deeper into the woods.
