After exercise in the tree-lined yard of the old gaol,  I am returned to my cell, clutching a fallen twig of oak. Yellow eyes doesn’t seem to mind this simple addition to the contents of my room, and lets me keep it.

“They will fade and crumble soon,” he mutters, as though the judgment carries enough negative weight against the idea of keeping them. “You can sweep up your own bits when they do . . .”

This simple exchange sums up our current relationship. His initial venom towards me, and relish at my incarceration within his ‘care’, is giving way to the beginning of what I perceive as a process of grinding down my soul. The reference to the certainty of the fading oak leaves being a case in point; the leaves will decay – this is inevitable, and Yellow Eye sees himself as an agent of the inevitable . . .