"It wasn't easy to find you."
Puddles dotted the weeds after the rain, reflecting the indistinct, gloomy sky between the treetops. Water dripped endlessly from above, falling wherever it pleased.
Decay and ruin defined this place. Moss crept up the cracks in the gravestones like fingers of nature, dragging these human-made objects and the names of their owners down into the mud.
Wadin found the person they had been looking for all morning at the edge of the cemetery.
A figure wrapped in a black physician's coat stood before a row of small gravestones.
One of them was obviously new. A wilted bouquet left there the night before still rested on it, already yellowing and fading. It was only a matter of time before it blended in with everything else.
"You weren't at the Academy or the clinic. If someone hadn't pointed me your way, I'd have spent the whole day looking."
The figure turned around, and Wadin saw the other things that had been hidden from view: an abandoned, empty swaddling cloth and baby clothes. There were also a few little handmade trinkets that looked rather crude, though their shapes had been smoothed down well, without a single rough edge.
"What are these?"
"One of my patients." Kraft flicked the raindrops from his coat hem. His hair tips and shoulders were damp; he had clearly been standing there for quite a while.
The Priest who had directed Wadin to him had seemed uneasy when speaking of this mysterious man. If he hadn't seen that the man was carrying no tools, he might have thought he had come to disturb the dead.
"Your patient?" It was an unusual experience. Brother Wadin had never imagined he would one day chat so calmly with someone from the Medical School in a cemetery.