The Sun Still Shines

The exact amount of days it had been was unclear, the first few days - anywhere between half a dozen days and a good month - had gone by in a blur. Recovery took so very much of the pair's time, and that was only tending to the physical wounds, the psychological wounds leaving roots that wound their way far deeper into them than any mere flesh wound ever could.
The man, a quiet, unassuming chap by the name of Henry Townshend, sported a veritable mosaic of scars decorating his body in a way that any moral person would find hard to look at. Tooth marks, some almost canine and some uncomfortably human, the marks of a blade or similar shaped object, and odd circular shapes adorning his body, avoiding his face by some miracle that he could not say he rightly deserved. But his marks, despite still serving as a reminder of an experience that nobody should experience, were so higgledy piggledy that there could be no pattern formed. The woman, once brimming with a life that was so close to being prematurely snuffed out, sporting the name of Eileen Galvin was decorated by the horribly personal marks of a madman. One of her eyes took on a milky hue, the sight poor but thankfully able to be partially saved, and was accompanied by a scattering of scars. This could have been passed off as the marks of an accident, the carvings of a madman reading 20/21 forever marking her for the foul purpose of an unwilling sacrifice.

The police had claimed it a copycat killer trying to recreate the Walter Sullivan killings of 1991, and the media lapped up this explanation easily sensationalised, and it was just easier for them to agree. No one would believe them if they told anyone they were attacked by the ghost of a long dead serial killer after all.

On a physical level, they had recovered as well as they could, but this was the only level they could claim to be even partly recovered. Henry had always been a recluse, notoriously going week without being seen, and yet he had taken it upon himself to go out for a walk at least once a day, if just to prove to himself that he could. Eileen, however, had been a bit of a socialite but had begun to lock herself away, not wanting to leave the perceived safety of her room, having been so brutally attacked when she had gone to leave once had gotten it in her head that if she were to leave harm would befall her, and worse still she could not bring herself to face a mirror, hating the broken woman she knew she would see in the glass.

Seeing her in such a state made Henry's heart ache in a way he could not fully understand, not put into words. Not that he was a man of many words even in the best of times.

It was a shot in the dark, but, with a little gentle coaxing through a hall in the wall that they now took to sharing as a point of communication, she had agreed to accompany him on a photo-shoot for a travel magazine. He promised to protect her, as he had done before, promised they would be going somewhere no one else would be, and finally promised that the moment she wanted to leave they would.
He had not expected her to agree, but was pleasantly surprised to find her agree, even if it was slightly hesitant in delivery.

The very next day they set out.

It was a simple enough trek through the woodlands that marked the outskirts of town. This had made him a tad worried that it might spark up memories better left forgotten, but by some miracle all was well. The pair looked somewhat less mismatched as they once had, the woman in a simple long grey shirt with purple over-shirt, better fit jeans than those worn by her companion, her fringe grown out to cover her face alongside the sunglasses she'd taken to wearing, the man in jeans faded over use, white dress-shirt letting a black undershirt peek out. She had volunteered to carry their lunch as he was busy with his photography. It was a quiet walk, but even if words were not so easily flowing, it was the presence of one another that mattered not the conversation they could have shared, following a path that weaved its way through the trees, the sunlight shining down through the canopy dappling the area in a dazzling dotting of dancing gold, immortalised behind the lens of his camera.
The world was so much easier to understand when he gazed into the eyepiece, all that existed and needed to be understood reduced to whatsoever he captured in the frame at any given time.