Whither.

Whither shall we go?

Whither. Such a strange word. Archaic, awkward, it flops around like a drunken bird, yet here seems so apt. So…redolent of the huge expanse still to be explored, known, made real.

I want. I want you here with me. Or me there with you. To be distant, separate, asunder, leaves me cut and bleeding from the inside to the ground.

But as all burns around me and the screams of the dying…I do not care. My heart is lost. I feel isolated; thin and weak. Already I find it harder to think, to breathe. I pray for your wellbeing though it is I who face the time of reckoning and then one of us shall be no more: I or it.

And fear is all around me, within me, become me as I cannot bring myself to move even to protect me from the flying ash and smoke that seek to smother me.

Take care my - , take care and let the care of others be your shelter. I will return triumphant; I swear it.

As each minute passes I miss you more if that were possible. Truly you did touch me as I now believe not even – did; the irreplaceable, I had thought.

This is between those I would were here, the passing few, and myself.