This time I am glad for the wedge that has been driven between us; in a way, I feel as though this wall of silence is exactly what we need. I know now the mistake I made—I allowed myself to get too close to him, and he mistook that for feeling. What bothers me is that eventually I probably would have done the same. Although we do not speak to each other, he remains by my side constantly, as if afraid I am going to attempt to leave him behind again. We hunt, gather, scavenge, eat, and sleep side by side, but we rarely even look at one another. In a way, things seem to have reverted back to the way they were before, but maybe that’s a good thing. Having found very few supplies in the last town we came across, I decide we should keep looking until we find more, and I break the silence between us to communicate this. It isn’t long before we find a town to raid, part of it charred and burned to the ground, but for the most part intact. Knowing it is likely there are other people here, we scout the place out from a distance.
