The River Keeps Its Own

“Some farewells don’t echo. They just dissolve—into river, into dust, into the places you can’t look without breaking.”

It took time. Not force, not reason—just the kind of slow, quiet persistence that grief doesn’t know how to resist. Eventually, Jamie relented. His grip loosened with visible reluctance, every finger an act of farewell, and he allowed me to help guide him as he laid Duke beside the river.

We chose a spot where the breeze whispered low, and the current moved gently past as if to honour the stillness now beside it. There was something sacred in the gesture. Not burial, not yet, but something close—a vigil. A place where Jamie could keep watch, like some ancient guardian carved from bone and sorrow.

As he straightened, I couldn’t look away. His chest bore the dried remnants of the night’s violence, the blood having seeped through fabric and skin until it was part of him. It clung in dark, rusted patches, like war paint accidentally earned. A grim record of the price we’d all paid—but especially him.

His trousers fared no better. They were stiff with blood, dirt, and the residue of something harder to name. Horror, maybe. Grit. The fabric sagged with the weight of it all, soaked not just in fluids but in memory.

Without a word, Jamie unfastened them and let them fall. The sound they made as they hit the ground was soft but final—like the drop of a curtain at the end of a play no one wanted to see.

Then, as if some inner tide shifted, he moved.

With a slow, leaden grace, Jamie stepped forward and into the river.

The water greeted him silently, parting around his legs with the same indifferent ease it always had, unknowing, uncaring. But I watched with a reverence that bordered on superstition, as though the river might recognise what had been done, what had been lost, and choose, just this once, to do more than cleanse.

Jamie stood waist-deep now, the water lapping at the lines of his grief. He didn’t speak. Didn’t cry. He simply stood, arms at his sides, letting the current thread through him.

And I stood, too—just beyond the waterline—watching. A silent witness to the stillness. A sentinel to a man who had lost more than words could carry.

The river washed the blood away from his skin.

But some stains were rooted deeper. Far below the surface.

"I'll go and get you some fresh clothes," I told Jamie, my voice steadier than I felt. It was the sort of offer people make when there’s nothing else to offer. A task. A purpose. A moment of order in a world fast losing its structure. He needed something dry to wear. I needed something to do.

In the back of my mind, I knew his old clothes wouldn’t be salvaged. Blood-soaked, steeped in pain—they would be surrendered to fire before nightfall. Burned not just for hygiene, but because there are some things you don’t fold away and keep. Some memories are too loud to store.

"Paul or Glenda can direct you to the right tent," Jamie replied. His voice was hoarse, ragged from grief, as though every word had to be pried loose from the wreckage inside him.

Then he turned away. No farewell, no further exchange. Just the hollow arc of his spine as he faced the river again, letting silence drape itself around him. He didn't need company. He needed space.

I stayed a moment longer.

Crouched beside Duke, the ground rough beneath my knees, I reached out. My fingers trembled slightly as they brushed his head—so still now, so quiet. He’d once been a creature of motion, all bounding limbs and loud declarations of affection. That silence now felt unbearable. Off. Wrong.

As I touched him, a flood of memories breached the fragile dam I’d tried to hold up. His laughter—not quite a laugh, but that joyful panting huff that passed for it—rose unbidden in my ears. The weight of him on my lap, uninvited but always welcome. The way he’d leap onto me as though gravity were optional, as though love was a full-body contact sport.

His kisses, ridiculous in their enthusiasm, had once coated my face like an overzealous car wash. Now, I would’ve given anything for just one more of those sloppy, undignified affections.

"It's not fair," I whispered. The words cracked as they left my lips, half-formed and wholly true. They were carried away on the breeze, heard by no one, meant only for him.

"You didn’t deserve this, dear, sweet Duke."

Tears fell freely now, carving hot, invisible tracks down my cheeks. There were no sobs. No theatrics. Just the silent, steady ache of love transformed into grief, pressed into the shape of goodbye.