This is one entry of the story I am drafting — and sharing — during NaNoWriMo. It’s my first real go at writing fiction, and it’s fast paced without looking back. Read accordingly. It is not planned, but continues to reveal itself as I write. I hope you are as thrilled reading it as I am writing it.

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Declan sat for a while, looking out over the expanse of forest he had just traveled through. He took deep breaths, in an effort to both take in the moment and to calm his breathing back down to a dteady pace. He wiped the sweat from his face and brow with the bandana he had stuffed with other things to have handy in the top pouch of his pack. Replacing and zipping the pouch closed, he returned to staring out into the expanse.

“Well, Amber, here we are. You remember this spot, I trust,” Declan spoke aloud. #EDIT PRIOR ENTRY—HE HAD BEEN HERE BEFORE#

And Declan continued breathing. He hoped this week would provide the space and time and thought he needed to return to Emma Kate with as much strength and presense as he could possibly get to in order to be the father she needed and deserved, and for himself. Though he did not think much of himself in these regards. No, Declan found an odd sense of place within the pain and loss, a place he perhaps felt he deserved, or that he identified with in some strange, not masochistic way, but in a ay that drove him, that gave him focuse, that gave him an opposite force from which to propel himself forward amid the confusing and lingering, no festering doubts and self-convictions of how he had, well, he couldn’t really come to fully achknowledge that.

As Declan sat, wet from his body’s sweat, from the purge of his push and drive to reach this point, he started to feel a chill as the day had passed so that he was further from the sun than he had been when he earned the sweat, and he was no longer moving, and the slight convestion current of the breeze that he was now exposed to took his heat from the furious rage of his push to get here, and soflty carried it away.

Declan sat, attuning himself to the feeling of his body’s temperature dropping. For a brief moment, the thought entered his mind that he wanted to and could just sit there, and let the cold sweep him away, to Amber, to—

No, he thought, that’s crazy. And Emma Kate, no way, he thought. He thought on the irony of the chill that at once could alert and awaken him could also lead him into a comfortable sleep if it were cold enough, a sleep he would not awaken from, again, if it was cold enough. But it wasn’t. And he wasn’t going there. So Declan rose to his feet, hiked his pack up to sit on its bottom, resting against his leg, and proceeded to take out the stuff sack that contained his dry, warm layers. Declan took off his shirt and felt a tingling throguhout his body as a new surge of cold at first hit him, but then subsided now that his body was free from the wet layer drawing the heat from him.

Declan put on his long-sleeved wool undergarment. He then put his wool hat on, and instnantly felt a sense of relief frmt he cold, releif he enjoyed while not wanting to enjoy it too much. Declan then hung his shirt from a nearby branch. Declan felt a pang of hunger growl through his stomach. He was hungry. He knew his body needed nourishment, but he decided he did not want to eat. He would not eat until he absolutely would drop if he didn’t. He had to push through, through the comforts of material needs, through even the sense of need for food unless he truly had no fuel left. He had to push through to the place where, that place where one came to know more truly what one’s self was made of, closer to the truth of who he was. But perhaps more improtantly to purge his vanity to discover more truthfully who he had been, had become, and who hemight be, for Emma Kate, for himself, and well, for Amber.

Declan had wrestled with the sense that he had caused Amber’s death, not in that he couldn’t revive her, but in that he had broken her heart that failed, that he had driven the life from her heart until it physiologically just gave.

But no, we loved each other. We love each other, he reminded himself. Ours were normal struggles, the ones all marriages ride the waves through, both through the storms and the calm seas, sometimes bailing desperately just to stay afloat, sometimes together as a team, sometimes opposing each other yet still somehow clinging to the boat that they floated in together. Other tmes, so many other times, it had been smooth sailing, as the saying goes, wind at their backs, sails full forward, sun ont heir faces, and the world at their becking call to live, thirve, be as they may. To love. To hold and cherish, to be. Together. Forever.

Declan began to set out his sleeping area. He took from his pack the small stuff sack that continued his needed materials. First he pulled frm it his nflatable sleeping pad, turned the cap loose to allow air to enter it, t o thwich he then added his own exhalations and screwed the cap tight. Delcan then removed the bivy sac he had chosen for purpsoe of austerity and light packing, pulled it from its own stuff sack, unfurled it, unzipped it, and slid his sleeping pad into. Then Declan took out the last item fromt he sack, his sleeping bag, a minimalists rock climbers’ bag he had, but reserved for when they did not have his bag zipped together with Amber’s. They had bought those especially for that, with opposite zips that they would become one double sleeping bag while also fully serving as two separate ones when needed. Kind of like the strands holding up the heart, Declan had thought as he pondedred this, pushing back a swrl of emotion. But why push it back, DEclan thought. This is why I am out here. Nonetheless, the pushing was done, and DEclan had squelched it so that if he were to bring it back, t would inauthentic, a forced sensation that was not natural.

Declan shook out the sleeping bag, forcing air into the feathered inner fiber to reinvigorate its insulative properties. DEclan then placed that into the bivy sac, atop the thinly inflated pad. Declan realized as he did so he had not set up this kind of solo sleeping setup sicne before he and Amber were serious. When they backpacked together, they slept together in the tent they had purchased together, at first in their own, older sleeping bags and then later int he zi-togethers they had bought for each other. Why hadn’t I been out in this on my own, Declan thought. This was something Amber had often encouraged Declan to do, to get out ofr a night or two onhis own, to take the time he needed to then be better for himself and for them.

Why hadn’t he ever taken up the opportunity to do so? What had happened? He used to take all the nights he could out in the woods. That was one things Amber had grown to love about him was his adventurous spirit, his apparent connection to what was also important to her, the outdoors, vigorous activity, time alone to be better for time with others. She had always noted he was a bit of an introvert. But why hadn’t he?

Declan pondered this as he returned to sitting atop the rock, the sun setting behind the higher peaks down the valley toward the west. IT seemed such a simple question to him, one he should be able to easily answer, yet any semblance of a clear reason was far from his vision. Amber’s voice entered his thoughts, in the form of a vivid memory.

“You’ve changed,” Amber said.

“What do you mean, I’ve changed?” DEclan responded.

“You’ve changed. You’re not who you were. You’re not the person I fell in love with. I mean, I still love you, but you’re not who I fell in love with. And I, well, I struggle witht hat sometimes.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. OF course I am. I’m right here. I’m still a good person. I still love you. I work my ass of for us.” Declan stated, all the while reasoning the calculations of these apparent facts, as they must clearly prove his point.

“You are still a good person. You’re a great person. But you’re not the same person I fell in love with, is all I am saying.” Amber replied. “Look, it’s okay. Let’s just finish getting this budget organized. We need to figrue this out and get back on top.”

“Yeah, I know. But I still don;t get what you mean by ‘I’ve changed’.” Delcan’s hurt showed in his fvoice. “You’ve chnaged, too, you kmnow.”

“There you go, Declan, making it about me, turning it around back toward me.”

“No, that’s not what I meant, but it’s just, we all change. That;s what happens. People change. Things change. situations change. We adapt and grow as that happens.”

“Yeah, you’re right, Declan.” Amber responded. “I’m just not sure we, you and I, are growing as we should, as I had thoguth, I don’t know, as we could be.”

“What do you mean? I’ve grown more in love with you than I ever thought possible.”

“Yeah, perhaps it’s the idea of me you’ve grown in love with.” Amber stopped. “What if it’s the idea of me, of us, of this,” Amber continued as she put her hands in the air suggesting this was everything around them.

“That;s not it, Amber.” Declan was getting anxxious now, his heart rate increased as he felt aroudn through his logic, througha ll his reasoning for the answer to Amber’s question, the one that would beyond a doubt put it to rest, reassure her, or was it him he was trying to reassure, that it was not it. Declan fetl sure he was most certainly in lvoe with Amber and not jsut the thought of her, the thought of them. How could he show it, he reasoned. How could he prove it, he calculated. “Amber,” and Declan took Amber’s hand into his own, “I have loved anad will always love you beyond any sense of love I ever thought possible.”

Declan’s reliving was interrupted by the red of the sky across the intermittent clouds as teh sun made its final descent behind the far peaks, as day finly gave way to night. In my part of the world, that it, thought Declan.

Declan stared out and wround, in awe of the hues of color across the sky, in awe of his place within it, and in awe of the magnitude of all that surrounded him. He took in a deep breath, exhaled, and repeated this. Each time, he focused on the gasses entering his lungs through his esophagus, focused on the exchange of gases deep within the alveoli, and focused on the cleanse of the toxins from his body wtih each exhalation. With eahc breath, Delcan told himself there is only right here, right now. There is only what is. In, a long breath. Out, a long exhalation. Calm, controlled, and mindful of this, Declan looked to the sky adn the sun and the valley below and the rock he sat upon and his sleeping gear laid out, and his feet beneath him as he sat cross-legged, of his spine, erect and pointing toward the sky, of his neck as he shifted it into aligment, to make a straight arrow of his body as if it could shoot up through the heavens and into space. Declan breathed, exhaled, breathed, exhaled. Thoughts of Amber swept through him, and he breathed. Feelings of guilt, or remorse, of loss, of pain, of anger, of absolute rage entered his thought patterns, and he willed himself to breathe through them, to exhale through them. He tried to identify each as what they are, a variable int he formula of life, a variable in the equation or inequlity of his life, of life in general, of his and Amber’s life together, of the life he was now condemmed to live. Or was he? Condemned? I have a beautiful little girl to raise and love, a girl that is the embodiment of our love, of me and Amber. That isn’t condemned. Delcan, breathe, stop processing, just breathe.

And Declan returned to his breaths, to the most presence he could muster, or better stated, to allow himself to be, and he breathed.

The last direct glimmers of singlight now arced and then dropepd behind the far peaks. Declan felt the darkness encroach, and he breathed. HE felt the fear of the night he had felt since Amber passed, the time when one doesnot as clearly see one’s conenction to the world around,a s that world was not darkened, now obscured from the human eye.
Breathe, Declan reminded himself. The another conscious inhalation, exhalataiton, inhalation,…

Declan breathed and felt the temperature drop further around him. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

And as Declan willed hismelf to focus on each breath, to feel all the senses around him, to try to allow thoughts and metions to enter and then exit as if rames in a film strip, he become more present. And as he willed hismelf to try not to grab onto one or another thought, to one or another frame int he slideshow of memories and emtoions and thoughts, he felt a sense of ease he had not felt since, well, when had he last felt this, he wondered.

He clung to that questions, and as he did he thought of all the harried memories of their days before Emma Kate arrived. Images of so much house work in preparation, memories of scrambling to finish his master’s studies, memories of arguments and all-out fights with Amber over this or that, over the color of this wall, or the chocie of this carpet or that, of which bottle system to choose… so many silly fights, Declan thought to himself. Why? For what? To what end? How did we get to that, he wondered. The blank space left by the gap in a rsponse to answer the question gave way to the realization that he was again out of his meditation, out of his breathing, grabbing on to particulars rather than allowing himself to be, to just simply be.

So Declan tried to breathe again, tried to find the moments he had just felt, where he had connected to that sense of peace, witht he world, with himself, with Amber. How long had he been able to connect to it, he asked himself. He tried to return again.

Breathe, he told himself. INhale. Exhale. Inhale. Come on, Declan. Breathe, damn it.

delcan couldn’t return to that space. He couldnt breathe himself into it, couldn’t will himself into it. It’s gone, he thought, just like it always was, always left him after feeling it, after acknowledhing it and then trying to cling to it, to hold it as his own, as if he could stop the earth’s rotation, and hold or freezehis state of mind in that place, that place where ll was as it should be, where all was perfect, no matter the apparent circumstances.

Declan breathed a sigh, as opposed to a focused breath. And with it he exhaled his admission of defeat. His heart sank a bit, his posture arched over, and he put his head down.

Declan began to cry. This time, it was a cry of defeat, a cry of giving in to the apparent fact that he was losing, losing to the circumstances of his life, to his choices, to fate. Was it fate? Or was it of his making?

“Amber, please, talk to me. I can’t do this without you. I don’t know how I will do this without you. Please, please, please, talk to me. Please.”

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