I told Light on the seventh day, walking, while he had Ilse.
That was deliberate. I have never in my life asked another man for help with something inside my own head, and I found I could only manage it if neither of us had to look at the other while it happened.
He listened all the way through. The hollow, the hot pan, the wyvern's leg arriving in my head in sequence and feeling like my own idea. The week of it. The firewood. The stones.
When I finished he walked about forty paces without saying anything.
"You are certain you tried."
"I'm certain I stood there and meant it."
"That is a different sentence."
"I know it's a different sentence. That's the whole problem." I stepped over a run of loose shale and heard it go down the slope behind me. "A man who can't be bothered knows he can't be bothered. He can hate himself about it. I can't get near enough to hate myself. I go for it and my hand comes back with something else in it and I'm pleased."
