Hester woke up the next morning feeling, disheveled at best. Not daring to go anywhere upstairs or downstairs at all, just trying to keep the small fictional peace he can pretend is around. Wilbur not noticing Hester's lack of movement from the tiny front room they sleep in. Hester not even realizing Alexander was still gone when.

"Wilbur?" Hester said quietly asking a question while looking through one of the long rectangle windows looking past the snowy field and over to the forest of pine trees a little ways away.

"Is that Alexander?" Hester deadpans very much thinking he must be seeing things as Wilbur bounces over to the window Hester watching Alexander seemingly relaxing against a tall tree, it looking like a smaller less defined weeping willow. It took every single fiber of Hester's being not to do anything—or say anything, to just ignore him, like he wasn't there. Or like he didn't know him, Hester felt he didn't need to pretend when on the latter.

Alexander didn't move, even after Hester went out to look after the crops, both men didn't look each other's way they simply existed in a different world on a different plain one where the other was not, Wilbur didn't seem to understand the tension and happily ran throw the field picking at the weeds and flowers that poked out from it. Folding them on to one another since Wilbur couldn't use Alexander's long apple red hair anymore.

The day crept by slowly, leaving a bitter taste in Hester's mouth the longer the sun lingered in the open sky. Why wasn't Alexander moving? Was he hurt? Or did he just do this to tick Hester off? Either way it was working flawlessly. After a few long dream-like hours of mulling about, Alexander did show up, but mostly to get away from the cold. He stayed silent downstairs—though not without responding to the noises in his head—whatever that may be.

Hester put Wilbur to bed with only a few minor fussing and pouting, but—like a true hypocrite—didn't sleep at all, he sat down cross legged beside the small rapidly dying fire reading a book, one that Alexander gave him a few weeks prior from him constantly saying he was bored—it was about the stars—Hester was never one for rhyming and poetry reading then re-reading the book trying to remember every detail and section by heart—after all of he could memorize the Angel's stories then why not this?

Hester never had time to read when he was younger—there was always some new war to fight and people plotting to have his head and stick it on a pike. It was nice to have some sense of normal, of something not too far away from what other people are doing, like this was how the world should work.

-Other then it isn't-

Hester though, forgetting all about the stars and words on the page.

-It's missing something-

Hester knows what it was—who it was, but that didn't make the fact of the matter any less painful then it was yesterday, Gods maybe it would always be painful like a weight on his shoulder of shame he'll carry with him. A weight that he'll look for somewhere to place but be lost in his arms until it becomes too heavy to hold any longer.

Hester's eyes linger on the ground trying to see through it....