MOST OF ALL

Cort leaned his back against a tree, his horse grazing nearby, Merry lying with her chin on his thigh. He was chewing a blade of grass, staring at the horizon, just thinking. Time was passing and he still had no grasp on the reality of who he was. When he was busy, and he did try to keep busy, he managed to tuck the fact of that into a corner of his mind and concentrate on what he was doing. It never, however, went entirely away, but was always right there in that corner and if he paused even a moment, thrust itself out, demanding to be seen.

Now, though, he'd gone for a ride with no particular purpose other than to ride. He liked the Meridius land with its wide fields, its areas of woodland, its ponds and streams. The General and his wife had been nothing but kind to him and he'd grown quite fond of them both. Still, he needed time alone once in a while, time just to be and think.

He thought of Claire and how he wished he had more of himself to offer her. Always between them there was that hesitation, only on his part, only because the thing in the corner never fully came into the light, was never fully resolved.

The nightmares came quite steadily these days. More than once a night any more. It seemed what haunted him was right there, just below the surface, like a fish in Alistair's pond making a shadow in the water then darting under the bridge. Merry was still there for him in the nights. He hadn't expected that but fully realized that the longer the young dog was in his care, the harder it was going to be when the inevitable day of parting came.

He reached out, ruffling Merry's neck fur, and she got up, flopping herself entirely across his lap. "You knocked the reverend over, you roughneck," he chastised fondly. "You could've hurt him, you know." He held her face, looking into her eyes. "No, I guess you don't know that, do you?"  But the result of that unfortunate event had been to grant him a reprieve from parting with her. He wrapped his arms around her golden body, burying his face against her, trying to sort out just why she was so important to him.

Unlike with Claire, he never held himself back with Merry. Between man and dog lay only a pure openness of relationship. Merry knew him, cared for him, for what he was and neither lack of past nor present uncertainty was a matter of any import. Cort liked that, liked Merry's blissful unconcern with the fact that he had been ripped from somewhere and deposited here lost and directionless. She licked his face and he laughed. The dog filled some empty space in him with the simplicity of her devotion to him, her desire to be his companion whether he sat under a tree on a peaceful afternoon or woke sweating from a nightmare.

"I love you," he murmured into her fur. It was true. He did. Right now in all his unknown
world, he loved her most of all.