(Thank you to Cameron Moore for the image above: https://cameronmooreportfolio.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/329/)
The air was thick with ash, and what light there was was a blazing inferno, a bonfire of my home. To be honest, I was plastered. I had been in surgery and found a little rye a little anesthetic, and deduced that much more would work toward a far greater effect. So much was true, but besides finding myself slobbering drunk, and that the room had taken after me, swaying as if it would fall over, I awoke to the sounds of a raid.
The leech had wrapped some linen around my side, and through this cloth bled reminders of my wound. I grasped my sword, or grasped at it, and was in the midst of figuring which handle was indeed solid and would not prove a faery trick disappearing as some mirage, when my wife hurried in and brought my hand to its mark.
She seemed upset, but I in no way knew what she said; I was hardly even awake. Thus arming me, she shoved me out the door, and I, hobbling into the street, found all around me the loveliest mess of war a man ever desired.
My head hurt terribly the next morning, and I had dropped my sword somewhere out of memory. Sticky cakes of blood had dried to my skin, and my clothes were so torn I was indecent. Beside me was a raider who had been careless with his head, and I could do no good for him though his cold limbs were cast about my knees in supplication.
Kicking the carcass away, I crawled upon my hands and knees, crying for my wife.
Tale Told 