[haha I was trying to work out how dead would impact on flint! also: my first rodeo too, nice. I'm gonna go for a sort of happy medium with thomas being still alive, still around, but currently away, to keep the focus on these two a little more without turning flint into too much of a grieving rage machine.]

For a moment Flint thinks Silver means someone in town. For a moment, he thinks of Thomas — away for the month on one of his pilgrimages to the Jesuit community two day's ride away. He's unsteady with horror for a second, readying his hand for the poker...and then Silver finishes the thought, and he's being fucking metaphorical.

He feels relief. The world start to make a little bit more sense, though he's still struggling to grasp what John is here for. He watches him intently. Imposed upon this cottage Silver looks like a hallucination, but James knows that when he dreams of him he always gets some detail wrong. He couldn't dream this.

Flint's eyes follow the same path as Silver's, around the interior of the cottage, wondering what it must look like to new eyes. Books, maps, the unwashed dishes from two solitary meals. A half-written letter that James started to Thomas yesterday and now feels the urgent need to rip from the desk before John can draw close enough to read — he resists the instinct. A one-eyed black cat easily mistaken for a shadow on the windowsill until she rolls her head up to fix Silver with a hostile stare.

"Is the world better for it, do you think?"