Date Night

Red Roses

June: The Line Between Enough and Too Much

Theme: Moderation

Quote:

"Excess is the root of ruin; the wise know that the mirrour’s beauty lies in its simplicity." —Jean Puget de La Serre

Resolution 25: The Halfway Point

We've reached June. The sixth month of 2025. Week twenty-five out of fifty-two. Resolution 25. The midpoint of the year, and of the promise I made to myself in January.

I didn’t call it a resolution at first—not in the way people usually do. There was no gym membership, no diet plan. Just this: to face myself honestly, month by month, through the mirror of writing. To name what I’ve hidden. To make peace with what I cannot change. To live without flattery.

I couldn’t have known how difficult some truths would be. How heavy it would feel to revisit certain memories. Or how liberating it might become to finally write them down.

If I could speak to myself at the beginning of this year, I would say: You will not be healed by discipline alone. You must also learn tenderness.

This halfway point isn’t a transformation. It isn’t triumph. It’s quieter than that. It is a deepening. A grounding. A realization that growth is not always forward—sometimes it is downward, into the soil with the roots.

Moderation, this month’s virtue, arrives as a necessary teacher. I’m beginning to see that excess doesn’t always look like ruin. Sometimes it looks like success. Sometimes it looks like normal. But beneath it, something frays.

This month, I do not write to confess. I write to continue. To carry forward the vow I made at the start of this year: to live truthfully. The mirror must remain unbroken. And to do that, it must reflect the shadows too.

Reflections on Truth

Part I: Before – The Slow Creep

Quote:

"The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all."'— Søren Kierkegaard

The first time I drank, I was nearly twenty-one, and I remember it vividly—not because it was illicit or dangerous, but because it was good. I was fishing with friends, sunburned and tired, our hands still smelling faintly of lake water and scales. We fried the day’s catch over an open flame, and someone passed me a Coors. Ice-cold. Just bitter enough to be interesting. They didn’t know it was my first, and I didn’t tell them. I liked that it felt easy, effortless. Like I’d always belonged there.

There was no drama. No collapse. No dark foreboding. Just a drink, a fish fry, and a warm Missouri evening in late Spring. If you’d asked me then what moderation meant, I might’ve shrugged. I hadn’t yet learned that excess doesn’t begin as a fall. It begins as a comfort. A reward. A habit.

Kierkegaard wrote that the greatest hazard of all—losing one’s self—can happen quietly, as if it were nothing at all. That line has haunted me. Because that’s what happened. I didn’t lose myself in a single moment. I misplaced myself slowly, quietly, across years. In bars. In laughter. In hangovers passed off as jokes. I lived in the margins of what seemed normal—especially for someone in their twenties. Long nights. Loud music. Bottomless glasses. And still, I made it to work. I drank coffee to chase off the fog. I told stories about being young and tired and burning the candle at both ends.

And in some ways, I was doing what everyone else seemed to be doing. I was playing the part. But something in me was drifting. I started drinking not for celebration, but for silence. To hush the noise of self-doubt, disappointment, fatigue. I began to pour more when I was lonely. When I didn’t want to talk. When I didn’t want to feel.

By the time I married, drinking had become a structure in my life—an unspoken part of the routine. Dinner and drinks. Friday night whiskey. A bottle always nearby. I wasn’t reckless. I wasn’t violent. But I wasn’t present either. I wasn’t listening. And I wasn’t honest. I didn’t drink to excess in ways that would alarm anyone—but I drank enough to dull the discomfort of a relationship in quiet decline.

I didn’t stop to ask what it meant to be moderate. I made plenty of mistakes and all too often made a fool of myself. Drunk at Halloween. Drunk on Holidays. Drunk on trips. Drunk with friends. Drunk at home. I just made sure I wasn’t the drunkest one in the room most of the time. I thought that was enough.

But moderation isn’t about comparison—it’s about clarity. It’s about being able to stand still, look yourself in the eye, and say: This is enough. Not because you’ve hit the limit, but because you’ve heard the voice inside that says, You don’t need to run tonight.

I wasn’t running toward anything. I was just running. And it worked, for a time. Until it didn’t.

I didn’t know it yet, but I was already well into the middle of a story I’d be telling differently for the rest of my life. A story not of rebellion, but of erosion. Not a tragic fall—but a quiet surrender to habits I didn’t want to examine too closely.

And then, one day, it caught up with me.

Reflections on Humility

Part II: During – The Moment the Mirror Cracked

Quote:

"The mirrour, untainted by flattery, doth humble the proud by showing them not what they wish, but what they are." — Jean Puget de La Serre

It was a friend’s wedding. A night of laughter and dancing, of stories told under strings of white lights and empty kegs. The kind of night where joy feels simple again, where no one watches the clock. The beer was flowing and the tap was open. I remember exactly what it was—Tank 7, my favorite. A farmhouse ale brewed with strength behind its charm. High gravity. One of those beers that counts for two, even when you're pretending it's just one.

I stayed late to help clean up. I stacked chairs and folded tables and talked about nothing with people I’d known for years. And then I got in my truck.

I believed I was fine. Not because I had measured anything, but because I felt fine—and that was the problem. Moderation had long ago stopped meaning measurement. It had become a feeling. A gut check. A guess. That guess ended at a checkpoint not far from the venue.

There wasn’t a moment of denial. No pleading. No grand display of innocence. I stepped out of the truck and sat in the van. I let them draw my blood. I didn’t argue because I knew. I knew what I had done. And I knew what was coming.

I was broken in that moment—not because of the charge, but because of the mirror it held up. I had imagined this kind of moment for years. Feared it. Feared being exposed as that kind of person. Someone careless. Someone reckless. Someone caught.

But what I hadn’t expected, in those early minutes of humiliation, was kindness. I was offered a chance to call someone. No jail that night. Just quiet shame. A pair of friends picked me up and took me home. I was silent. And so were they.

The next morning, I returned for my truck. Someone had broken into it during the night. They'd forced open my toolbox. My tools were gone. But worse—so much worse—was the loss of my grandfather’s baseball glove. The one he’d worn when we played catch in the yard. The one that still carried the scent of his hands, his oil, his life. That was the thing that broke me. The glove was irreplaceable. A small relic that represented few good memories we had together, stolen on the very night I had proven how unsafe I could be.

Life after the DWI was misery. It wasn’t publicized—I was lucky, in that small and shameful way. Newton County. No article in the Carthage Press. No name in the Joplin Globe. But it was public enough. I told my boss because I had to miss work for court. I pled guilty because I was guilty. I accepted probation, paid fines, attended classes.

I learned about SR22 insurance—what it meant, how to get it, how to hide it. I had to have a breathalyzer installed in my truck. I learned how to blow into a machine while pretending I wasn’t. I avoided giving rides. I avoided communion at church, terrified that even a sip of wine would cost me everything.

I built a fortress of secrecy. I stopped letting people in—both metaphorically and literally. My truck became a private prison. I lived in fear that someone would see the wires, would ask questions, would know. I stopped seeing friends. I stopped trusting kindness. I hated myself.

I served my probation. I counted the days. I watched others move on with their lives while I lingered in suspended shame. And then, at last, the breathalyzer was removed. The technician smiled and said, “See you soon. You guys always come back.”

He meant it as a joke. Or maybe he didn’t. But I heard it as a statement.

That was the moment I understood the difference between punishment and change. The courts had sentenced me. The technician had doubted me. But the real question—the one the mirror kept asking—was whether I believed I could be different.

Not just someone who wouldn’t do it again, but someone who could live in the open again. Without hiding. Without shame. Without fear.

I wasn’t ready to answer that yet. But I knew this much: I never wanted to see the mirror crack like that again.

A Yearlong Journey

Part III: After – Learning to Hold the Cup Differently

Quote:

"Temperance is simply a disposition of the mind which binds the passion." — Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

Since that night, I haven’t had so much as a parking ticket. Not because I’ve become fearful, but because I’ve become clear. Something in me shifted—not all at once, but gradually, like a tide pulling back from a shore I didn’t realize I’d wandered so far from.

When I first read Aquinas’s line—that temperance is a disposition of the mind which binds the passion—I felt something in me settle. He wasn't speaking about repression. He wasn't talking about denying desire altogether. What he was describing was alignment. A soul no longer driven by its urges but shaped by something steadier. A person who could hold their own appetites without being held hostage by them.

That’s what I had to learn. Not to pretend I never wanted to have drink—but to understand why I had wanted it in the first place. Why it had become so easy to reach for numbness instead of presence. Why it had become a pattern rather than a pleasure. Temperance, in Aquinas’s sense, is not about refusal—it’s about right relationship. Between the self and its passions. Between desire and restraint. Between what feels good and what is good.

I no longer crave drunkenness. In truth, the very idea makes me feel ill. Not because I fear consequences, but because I finally see the full cost—not just to my body, but to my sense of self. What I missed wasn’t alcohol—it was ritual. A cold drink on a summer evening. The casual camaraderie of a shared pint. I’ve since found that again in a new way, through non-alcoholic beers like BERO. They offer the taste I loved, minus the weight I no longer wish to carry.

This may seem small. Trivial. But it isn’t. Finding something that allows me to participate in the good part of a former vice without stumbling into the excess is a kind of redemption. A reordering. It allows me to enjoy pleasure without losing balance. This, I believe, is what Aquinas meant: a disposition of mind—not a moment of willpower, but a habit of the soul—formed through trial, failure, and, ultimately, self-awareness.

I’ve come to understand that addiction, in many forms, is the mind’s way of negotiating pain. It says: I cannot sit with this, so I will reach for that. The problem isn’t that we desire too much—but that we too often desire what cannot satisfy. And in chasing those desires, we let our passions govern us.

Temperance doesn’t ask us to kill those passions. It asks us to bind them—to know them, name them, and carry them without being carried away by them. That’s what recovery has become for me—not a renunciation, but a reconciliation.

Forgiveness was harder. Not because I believed I should still be punished, but because shame is a subtle tyrant. It doesn’t need bars or breathalyzers to keep you trapped. It just needs a whisper that says, You’re not who they think you are. For years I have lived in fear of being discovered—not for what I’d done, but for what that mistake might make people think I was.

But healing came through confrontation—through facing the mirror honestly, again and again, until I no longer looked away. Until I could say, Yes, I failed. But I am not my failure. Yes, I made a mistake, many in fact. But I am not unworthy of peace. That is what binds the passion—not shame, not punishment, but clarity.

My mirror now holds no flattery, but it no longer mocks. The cracks remain, but I have stopped seeing them as signs of ruin. They are simply reminders of the pressure I’ve survived. They remind me of what can be rebuilt.

Looking Ahead

Moderation is no longer a limit placed upon me. It is a gift I offer myself.

It is the space between desire and compulsion. It is the breath between question and answer. It is the room I make in my life for grace, for presence, for enough.

In the days ahead, I want to keep tending that inner disposition Aquinas describes. I want to hold my passions gently, knowing they can harm but also point toward beauty when rightly bound. I want to live as someone who has looked in the mirror, seen clearly, and chosen not to flinch.

Because healing is not forgetting the past. It is carrying it differently.

Afterword: A Note on Addiction and Grace

Alcoholism is serious. Addiction is real. And the difference between a bad habit and a lifelong illness is not always visible from the outside. For some, one mistake is the beginning of a long descent. For others, it becomes a wake-up call. I was fortunate. I was loved. I had support. And even then, the road back to myself was long.

This reflection is not meant to suggest that addiction is simply a matter of choice or clarity. I know now how complex it is—how rooted it can be in pain, in trauma, in unspoken shame. And I know, too, how often people suffer silently, afraid to ask for help. Afraid of being judged or misunderstood.

What I learned from this experience is that grace is not given once. It must be practiced. To receive it, and to offer it.

I have learned that my responsibilities extend beyond my own choices. I have a duty to be a better friend. To notice when someone is struggling. To speak honestly when concern is needed. To offer presence, not just advice. And to never make light of what I once carried so heavily.

I do not look back on this story with pride, but I do look back with clarity. And with hope. I am not who I was. And I do not carry this mirror alone.

If you or someone you love is struggling with alcohol or substance use, please know that help is available. You are not alone. Reach out to a counselor, a doctor, a support group, or a trusted friend. Resources like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), SMART Recovery, and local treatment centers exist for a reason: to walk with you through the hard parts.

Recovery is possible. Healing takes time. But grace is real—and both you and me are worthy of it.

After the Rain

Whatcha Doing?

A Scholar at His Desk (1632)

What does it actually mean to know something? Not just to repeat facts or hold a degree, but to internalize knowledge so deeply that it shapes how you think and act? For a long time, I thought knowledge was something you collected—citations, arguments, publications, credentials. I imagined it like a trophy wall, each new insight another achievement. I was motivated by the hope that one day I’d be called “Doctor,” and that title would signify mastery.

But as my doctoral journey unfolded—especially after finishing my literature review—that definition started to feel hollow. I began to see knowledge not as an object you acquire, but as a relationship you form. Knowledge isn’t just something you have; it’s something you practice. It’s shaped by who you learn from, how you reflect, and the context in which ideas emerge. Now that I’m entering the coding phase of my dissertation—working through interviews, writing memos, identifying themes—I feel less like a scholar proving a point and more like a researcher engaged in meaningful interpretation. I’m not standing above the material; I’m immersed in it.

Jacob Adriaensz Backer’s painting, A Scholar at His Desk, feels deeply resonant. The figure is surrounded by the materials of scholarship—papers, inkwells, a quill—but nothing about the scene is rushed. His hands are clasped, his eyes lowered in concentration. He isn’t in the act of writing or reading. He’s pausing, reflecting. That moment of stillness says more about the life of a scholar than any dramatic display of insight. It reminds me that real learning doesn’t happen in sudden flashes—it happens through long attention, through patience, through presence.

Three years into my doctoral work, that presence feels familiar. As I begin to code the interviews I’ve collected, I’m struck by how rich and human the data is. Every transcript carries the weight of real people—educators, leaders, advocates—doing difficult, emotionally charged work to support students in fragile situations. These aren’t just “data points”; they’re stories. Grounded theory offers a method to analyze them, yes—but also to honor them. It asks me to look closely and remain open to what might emerge.

And this brings me back to a deeper question that underlies my entire project: What does it mean to know something? In philosophy, this question lives under the field of epistemology. The ancient Greeks gave us distinctions like episteme (theoretical knowledge), techne (practical skill), and phronesis (practical wisdom). Thinkers like Descartes sought certainty through doubt, stripping knowledge down to its foundations. In many traditional Ph.D. programs—especially in philosophy—the goal is to build abstract systems, to isolate truth in its purest form. The focus is on coherence, logical rigor, timeless principles.

But my degree is in education—specifically, an Ed.D., the Doctor of Education. While it shares the title “Doctor” with the Ph.D., it follows a different path. The Ed.D. is traditionally practice-focused, emphasizing real-world application, leadership, and solving problems of practice within educational systems. Yet I often find that my work—particularly in its use of constructivist grounded theory—leans toward the theoretical, interpretive, and philosophical, aligning in many ways with the intentions of a Ph.D.

At times, I’ve wondered whether my study, with its open-ended questions and focus on meaning-making, might be more at home in a Ph.D. program. My research explores ethics, equity, and the nature of learning itself—concerns often associated with philosophical inquiry. Still, I remain drawn to the Ed.D. because my goal is not to theorize in abstraction but to create knowledge that lives in the world. If the Ph.D. builds frameworks for understanding, the Ed.D. asks how those frameworks behave under the pressure of lived reality.

Educational knowledge, in this context, is never divorced from ethics. It asks how we teach, who we teach, and who gets left behind. It lives in classrooms, in hallways, in the unspoken social codes between teachers and students. The theories I generate will not live in marble halls; they will live in underfunded districts, in programs designed to keep kids from dropping out.

This is why educational research is always entangled with ethics. We’re not just exploring what is true—we’re asking what is just, what is helpful, what is humane. Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, emphasized that knowledge is not a static thing deposited into passive students. It’s dialogic—it emerges from interaction, from shared struggle, from mutual engagement. He wrote, “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” That quote resonates deeply with my current work. I’m not looking for certainty. I’m looking for insight that transforms both the knower and the known.

Constructivist grounded theory supports this approach. As Kathy Charmaz explains, this method acknowledges that all knowledge is shaped by perspective. Researchers are not detached observers; we’re participants. Our histories, identities, and values shape how we see and what we notice. This doesn’t weaken our findings—it deepens them. As Charmaz puts it, “Grounded theory fosters seeing beyond the obvious and opens up a path to understanding complex relationships and meanings.”

Returning to Backer’s scholar, I see a portrait not of accomplishment, but of engagement. His robe, lined in red, pulses with quiet vitality. The tools around him are worn but ready. His learning is not cold or distant; it’s intimate. Simone Weil once wrote, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.” That’s how I’ve come to see my coding work. Each memo I write, each quote I highlight, is an act of attention—an effort to honor someone’s story and understand the world they inhabit. It’s not just scholarship. It’s care.

Of course, there are days when this work feels overwhelming. I sit in silence, reading and re-reading transcripts, wondering whether the codes I’m developing will ever add up to anything meaningful. But I’ve come to trust that meaning doesn’t always come quickly. Sometimes it only arrives after returning, again and again, to the same lines, the same voices. The insight grows slowly, through repetition, through reflection, through the willingness to sit with discomfort.

And in that slowness, I’ve found something like a philosophy. Not the kind that builds grand systems, but the kind that stays close to the ground. The kind that recognizes the dignity of each person’s story. Scholars and monastics have long shared a common image: the figure at the desk, immersed in silence, surrounded by texts. That image has become real for me. In the solitude of analysis, I’ve learned how deeply personal research can be.

Thomas Merton once said, “We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone—we find it with another.” The same is true for research. Meaning emerges not through mastery, but through relationship. Through the act of listening. Through long attention.

So I return to my desk. The work is long. The answers are slow. But I now understand something I didn’t at the beginning: to know is not to dominate. It’s to dwell. It’s to remain open. It’s to keep asking, listening, wondering. That is the long patience of scholarship.

And I’m thankful to be here.

I:V:I: The Quiet Reckoning

I: The Quiet Reckoning

March 8, 1201

The air hung heavy with winter rot as Halward stood before the three graves behind St. Hubert's Chapel. Two weeks had passed since the fight, yet the mounds still bore the raw edges of memory. Alan’s body had long since been taken home—given the rites of his kin—but these three had no such courtesy. They had come out of the forest on a cart: two woodsmen, a boy, and a city guard. All had bled into the ground of Sherwood, and now three of them rested on the threshold of the gate.

Halward’s breath hung in the cold as he looked down, but it was not the frost that held him still. His thoughts returned to the day they dug these graves. He could see it clearly: the crunch of the spade against the frozen earth, the way Wil had stood beside him, sleeves rolled, jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the soil. The boy had not witnessed the fight—Hal had ordered him to stay at the gate—but he had carried the weight of what followed. Together they had dug through stone-laced ground, side by side in silence.

No weeping. No trembling. Only labor.

That had unsettled Halward more than blood ever could. That quiet had changed something in the boy. And perhaps in him, too.

There had been no priest. No formal rite. Only the old tools and the older silence. Oswin and Rafe had lowered the bodies, but it was Halward and Wil who had opened the earth. Wil had waited at Woodgate during the violence—kept from the danger by Halward’s command—but he had not been spared its cost. With sleeves rolled and face drawn tight, he had labored beside the Warden in the frozen soil, saying nothing as the earth swallowed the dead. The boy had not flinched. He had not wept. That silence, Halward now knew, had marked the beginning of something.

Halward said nothing. He simply looked. His breath drifted in faint clouds, and his hands remained at his sides. His eyes moved slowly from one grave to the next, the way a man might scan the faces of the fallen on a battlefield. The morning frost clung to the grasses like ash, and Arrow, perched in the boughs above, called out once, then fell silent.

Now, that same silence lingered.

Halward shifted his weight and knelt briefly before the center grave. He brushed away the snow gathered at its base, exposing the dark soil beneath. With the edge of his glove, he pressed the dirt down slightly more firmly, as if reaffirming the finality of it. "May the gate judge rightly," he murmured—neither prayer nor pardon.

Two of his men were out now, patrolling the upper ridge. They had departed before first light, taking the narrow east trail where old growth twisted thick as rope. They were due back by third bell, though Halward had come to suspect that even the paths near Woodgate no longer behaved as they should. The forest had turned watchful, cautious—as though it too waited for something to resolve.

The gate stood closed. The chapel burned low. The sounds of normalcy—the clatter of water from the cistern, the rhythmic sweep of Oswin’s broom, the rattle of Wil’s voice as he read aloud from the Book of Hours—all were absent.

This silence was not peace. Peace had left Woodgate.

And not just peace, but the illusion of safety. The silence now bore teeth.

There had been no rites spoken for the dead. No bells tolled. No record etched into the parish roll. The men buried here had died by the laws of steel, not of parchment. Forest justice, or so it had seemed at the time. But justice did not bring comfort. Halward felt only weight.

Oswin had said little during the burial. He had merely placed the stones—three in all, flat and bare, pressed deep into the soil as if to pin down what lay beneath and keep it from stirring again. Rafe had done most of the lowering, his shoulder still aching from a wound taken weeks prior.

Rafe crouched beside the third grave when it was over, wiping his brow with a gloved hand. "The forest will remember," he said quietly. "Whether we speak their names or not."

Oswin, standing just behind him remained still, one hand resting on the handle of the spade, his gaze distant and fixed on nothing. Behind him, the chapel’s stained-glass windows caught the pale morning light and refracted it into fractured halos across the snow-dusted yard. The colors—worn blues and dusky reds—danced across the frost like broken fragments of old liturgy.

As Hal stood remembering, a wind passed through the trees, light but pointed, and the chapel bell let out a single chime—not from any hand, but from the sway of the rope against the frame. It sounded not like a summons, but like a warning.

The graves were silent. And beyond them, so was the woods.

***

The first signs of spring had begun to stir—tentative and pale, but present. A flush of green touched the base of the elder bushes along the chapel wall. The frost that once stiffened the ground now sank into cold mud, and the birds, long silent, had begun to test the morning air with thin, uncertain song.

Oswin moved about the chapel yard with slow intention. He had taken to sweeping the stone path twice each morning, not because it needed it, but because routine had become his means of holding back worry. The past days had hung in the air like unspent thunder.

At the gate, Halward stood just behind the post, arms crossed, his face unreadable as he watched the two new patrolmen dismount. They were young—too young.

The older one, Ellis, was big for seventeen and carried himself like a soldier from a play. His gear was polished, his grin a little too easy. He moved with the looseness of a boy who had never been knocked to the ground. Halward noted the way he greeted Arrow with a whistle—casual, friendly, utterly ignorant of the gate’s weight.

The other, Corbin, was sixteen at most. Thin, pale, silent. His eyes flicked from the chapel to the trees to Halward’s face, never resting. He said nothing, only tightened his grip on his satchel strap.

Ellis handed Halward a folded note, its wax seal bearing the crest of Nottingham. Hal broke it open and scanned the contents, jaw tightening slightly as he read.

The orders were clear—signed by Sir Bertram himself. Taxes were rising again. The crown had begun mustering knights and levies as John turned his gaze toward Normandy. Woodgate, it seemed, would be expected to contribute more coin and more compliance.

Halward folded the message once and tucked it into his coat. One word echoed in his mind—scutage. He would be the one collecting the coin that kept Bertram and the Sheriff safely in Nottingham, while boys like these died on the edge of the forest. The arithmetic of kings always drew its lines in the blood of the young.

Halward studied them both, expression flat.

Ellis would be the talker. The one who tried to fill silence with swagger.
Corbin might listen. But he’d break first, if the forest ever spoke back.

Neither of them would last the year.

A flicker of movement at the edge of the clearing caught Halward’s eye. Wil was hauling small branches in a bundled cord across his shoulders. He worked quickly, not for praise but because work dulled thought. The boy’s face was set, focused. Halward watched him for a moment longer than necessary, then turned back to the newcomers.

“Come,” he said, nodding toward the gatehouse. “You’ve eaten. You’ve slept. Now you’ll learn.”

He led them to the post near the eastern wall, where the old ledger waited atop a stone slab worn smooth by weather and years. “First lesson,” he said. “Everything gets written. Names, faces, direction of travel. If you forget, you ask. If you’re uncertain, you wait. The gate does not rush. It judges.”

Ellis stood straighter, nodding quickly, as if memorizing a drill. Corbin watched the quill as if it were a blade.

Halward pointed to the forest. “Second lesson: nothing that comes from there is as simple as it looks. The forest lies. It listens. It remembers. You forget that, you die.”

They said nothing. That was something.

Halward turned toward Wil, who had just finished stacking his load by the woodshed. “Wilmot,” he called, “join us.”

The boy wiped his hands and approached, quiet but attentive.

“You’ll teach them how to track firewood lines,” Halward said. “And how to read a traveler’s boots.”

Wil blinked. “Me?”

“You’ve watched long enough. You know what to look for.”

Wil nodded, glancing briefly at the two boys who would now walk the same line he had.

Halward returned to the bench and sat in the shade of the gate, his hand resting lightly on the pommel of his sword. He would watch them all. But the learning would begin with Wil.

Peace had left Woodgate. But the work remained.

Arrow fluttered down from the lintel of the gate and landed on Wil’s shoulder, his talons light and sure. The bird gave a quiet croak, nuzzling into the folds of Wil’s cloak like a sentry settling into place. Corbin stared, wide-eyed. Ellis muttered something under his breath about omens.

Wil said nothing, only reached up with one hand to steady the bird, then turned to the others.

“Come on,” he said. “The wood-line bends east this season. That’s where you’ll lose the trail if you’re not watching.”

And just like that, the Warden’s lessons passed from hand to hand, taken up by a boy and a raven beneath the waking limbs of Sherwood.

***

Wil led them past the treeline, where the forest floor softened underfoot and the air thickened with old leaves and rising damp. Arrow flitted ahead, gliding low and quiet before perching on a twisted yew. The boy stopped beside a patch of disturbed earth and pointed without speaking.

“Here,” he said. “Hare track. See the print? Back feet long, front ones short. The snow’s melted just enough to catch it.”

Ellis crouched low, squinting. “Could be a dog,” he muttered.

“No,” Wil said calmly. “Dogs don’t run with their feet that close. And a dog wouldn’t leave this.”

He held up a curled, fresh dropping, pale and dry on the outer crust.

Corbin looked a little green. Ellis wrinkled his nose.

Wil stepped forward again. “Look at the ground. See how the moss is bruised here? It veered left, downhill.”

“Toward the bramble?” Corbin asked.

Wil nodded. “It’ll try for shelter. If it’s not spooked, it won’t run far. But we won’t flush it—we follow. Quiet.”

They moved in single file, Wil in front, Arrow flitting from branch to branch above them. The forest changed around them—subtly, but not invisibly. The light cooled. The trees grew closer. Even Ellis stopped talking.

After a hundred paces, Wil raised a hand and they stopped.

“Up there,” he whispered.

A flicker of fur, pale and twitching, just behind a veil of ferns. The hare hadn’t seen them yet.

Corbin held his breath. Ellis reached slowly for the knife at his belt.

“No,” Wil said. “We don’t kill it.”

Ellis blinked. “Why not?”

“Because it’s not ours,” Wil replied. “Not today.”

The hare twitched once, then darted into the brush. Arrow let out a quiet croak, as if to mark the moment.

Wil turned to speak again—but he was already moving behind a tree.

The boys waited, expecting him to reappear on the other side.

He didn’t.

They stepped forward, chuckling nervously.

“Wil?” Ellis called. “Very funny.”

There was no answer.

They searched the trees ahead, then backtracked along the path—but there was no sound, no sign.

Then Corbin saw the tracks in the mud. Clear. Human. Wil’s. And someone else.

They ended in a patch of moss. No return prints. No break in the ferns.

He was gone.

The two boys bolted, crashing through the brush, heedless of the hare. They didn’t stop until they reached the gate.

Halward heard them before he saw them. They stumbled into the yard, breathless and wide-eyed.

“He’s gone,” Corbin managed. “Wil—he disappeared.”

Halward didn’t speak. He was already moving.

He ran past them into the forest, following the path they had taken. The tracks were there—briefly. Then they weren’t. They stopped, swallowed whole by the ground itself.

Arrow was nowhere to be seen.

Halward stood still, the trees pressing in around him.

The gate had not been opened.

But something had passed through.

***

Halward returned to Woodgate long after the light had shifted. The sun had vanished behind low clouds, and a thin drizzle clung to his shoulders as he crossed the yard. His boots were soaked through with cold moss, his cloak heavy with damp, and his jaw locked with quiet fury. The two boys—Ellis and Corbin—stood where he had left them, near the chapel wall, silent and ashamed. Neither spoke. Their eyes stayed fixed on the dirt.

He said nothing to them.

He climbed the stairs of the gatehouse tower slowly, deliberately, his body aching in the way it did only after failure. The stone steps felt narrower than before. Colder. Wil’s cot remained as it had always been—neatly made, the blanket tucked with care, the corner folded just so. That detail struck Halward harder than he expected. The boy had not packed in haste. He had not prepared to run.

No bag. No food. No cloak. Not even his book.

Halward crouched before the small chest at the foot of the cot and opened it. Inside: a folded shirt, a pair of worn gloves, a smooth pebble from the streambed near the chapel, a strip of wax from the candle girl in Nottingham, a length of twine wound neatly into a coil. Ordinary things. Innocent things. But none of them told him what he needed to know.

Then he found it.

Wrapped in a piece of cloth, tucked beneath the lining—

The fox token.

Dark wood, circular, the edges worn smooth by handling. The carving was fine: sharp lines forming the stylized shape of a fox mid-leap. Its eye was a single etch, deep and narrow.

It was still warm. Or so it seemed.

Halward stared at it in his palm for a long time, longer than he could explain. His throat worked once, but no sound came. He closed his fingers around it.

Then he stood and left.

***

He made the walk to the clearing without torch or companion. The woods did not resist him—they parted, as they always did for him—but tonight there was no familiarity in their silence. It felt observed. Watched. Measured.

The moon was just beginning to rise when he reached the ash tree—the old one with its twisted roots like fingers spread wide beneath the earth. The clearing was still, lit only by the dim grey light that filtered through thinning clouds. A wind moved the upper branches, but the clearing itself remained untouched.

Halward knelt at the base of the ash and placed the token gently into the soil at the tree’s roots. He bowed his head.

“I’m not here for judgment,” he said. “I’m not here for vengeance. I’m here for the boy. You know that.”

He sat. And he waited.

The forest did not answer. The forest did not need to.

It watched.

Halward, exhausted, succumbed to sleep. 

***

Dawn came without clarity.

The next morning, Halward rose stiffly, his cloak wet from dew, and returned to the gatehouse. He gave no word of what he had done to Oswin. He merely stood at the center of the yard and gave orders.

“All four of you,” he said, his voice low and measured. “North patrol. Ellis, Corbin—you follow orders. Speak only when spoken to. Stay behind the ridge trail.”

He did not bark. He did not shout. But his words had weight.

The two elder guards—Clement and Simon—nodded. They had seen Halward like this before—controlled on the surface, but beneath, something deeper churned. The boys sensed it too. They made no jokes, asked no questions.

They departed quickly, glad for the assignment.

Halward watched them go. His jaw clenched until the muscles ached. His hands were tight around the pommel of his sword—tighter than they should have been. Every instinct screamed at him to run after Wil, to tear through the woods like a hound on a scent. But there was no scent. No trail. Only that moment in the trees where everything had vanished.

He paced the yard three times before he allowed himself to sit. The gate stood open a handspan—ritual, routine. But to Halward, it looked like a wound. An invitation. A warning.

He sat on the Warden’s bench, helm beside him, the ledger on his lap. The page was blank. He did not open the inkwell. He did not take up the quill.

He stared east.

Midday crept upon the gate with a hush.

Then—thwack.

An arrow struck the wood beside the gate, the shaft quivering. The noise cut through the air like a blade. Halward stood before the vibration had stopped.

Wrapped around the shaft was a strip of parchment, bound in thread. He untied it with care.

The note was short. Barely more than a line. It was unsigned, except for a mark drawn in soot and ash.

The fox.

Robin would meet him.

Halward folded the message once. Then again. Then again. He did not put it away.

He simply sat, the paper in his hands, and waited for the hour to arrive.