Anything to take his mind off the present. He wasn't coping, he knew that. He was ignoring it. A knife was to his throat, and he was dealing with the problem by closing his eyes and pretending it wasn't there. He couldn't fully ignore it, obviously. The cold if the blade against his skin and the feeling of his life at risk was clear in this metaphorical comparison, but he wasn't ready. Not to confront the problem, and not to admit that there was one. He was getting there, he thought in some subconscious place within his mind. He was getting to the point where he could deal with it in some sort of way, perhaps not a healthy way, but deal with it in a way that worked for him. When that time came then he would be able to move on. That's what he kept telling himself, and that was what he had allowed himself to believe.

This went beyond just the loss of a friend. This was a change of his understanding of life and death. Could he continue to view killing in such away if a single death effected him so? Could he continue to believe it a part of nature that one simply had to accept when he couldn't even accept this? It was the beginning of understanding the problem, and yet he hadn't confronted it yet. This was more than just losing a friend, or losing someone whom was close to him. This was losing part of his ideology, part of what made him who he was. His outlook on life was currently be threatened, and he was shutting down to ensure that it could stay strong. It wasn't the healthiest way to go about dealing with this issue, but it was the one he was currently embracing.

Until he felt himself ready to deal with it, he would continue to avoid confronting the elephant in the room. He would go about his normal day in a haze, thinking not of the past nor of the future, and instead trying to live only in the present. He would focus on that, and nothing else, until he felt his walls crumble and he would be forced to address it. That could come in the form of events with his guild, or social interaction, or even training; Anything so long as it pulled his mind away from the problem. Right now it took the form of a quest, a relatively simple one which involved feeding fish. So he went out to the warehouse in which he was told of, different from when he helped build the boat, to get what he was told to get.

Fish food, something that would be used for a task so simple that it would allow him to just zone out. The state of mind in which someone did not have to think at all, it was something he was more than ready to embrace. As he grabbed the small packets of fish food and packed them up, he brought them over to the shore. The trek wasn't too far, but with Finn's glossed over eyes he had no real awareness of where he was anyways. He was simply moving without comprehending.

As he approached Raina, he entered her boat with her. She was speaking to him, but he had completely zoned her out. Instead Finn focused on the monotonous task of rowing, forcing the boat to slide across the water and to the area in which she designated they should stop. As she fed the fish, she continued to talk about the marine life in the area. Apparently something about how Hargeon was a hub for marine life, and how fish often would choose to go there during the colder times of the year due to Hargeon's relatively mild climate making the water more livable. Finn picked up only the basics, but at least it was something he could understand. Wildlife and how it moved was something he had to understand since childhood after all. As she finished feeding the fish, she apologized for rambling and thanked him for taking her out, paying him, and allowing him to row her back to shore.

WC: 713/700
EXIT