"Yes, yes," he said. "You're a handsome horse." He patted Nelson, and Nelson snorted, and went back to his grazing, having apparently acquired the compliment that he was looking for.
The peace of the place, when Oliver allowed his mind to properly settle, brought to his attention increasingly those wounds of his heart. They manifest not in the terrifying way that they had when he had considered them elsewhere. They came instead as something obvious.
He considered them, and he realized with a start. "Obviously my heart aches… Things have been objectively terrible."
