Be gentle

He stood on the lush greenery of his estate, passively registering the dim light of the distant moon bouncing off the tranquil waters of the lake. Everything was calm, everything was perfect. Everything, that is, but him.

Ewan drew himself further into his own thoughts, it had become habitual now to ponder his situation, and to reprimand himself for actions never taken...for opportunities not grasped and lifelines that had long sinced past. It had become habitual for him to think, and not act. He felt like a sullen teenager, he had everything he ever wanted; everything he thought he ever wanted. The truth is that although the material properties he posessed had temporarily appeased him, the yearning voice that spoke from inside never fell silent, but only whispered, whispered and waited. He wanted more. He needed more. He had to escape.

But how? How to escape the prison that encapsulated him? How to break through the invisible iron bars that he himself had forged? The rhetoric barraged Ewan like a tsunami, so much that he wrenched his head from the comforting cusp of his palms and cried a suppressed cry, enough to release the tension, enough that nearby rodents scarpered, and sleeping birds took to flight...and yet with enough quiet that he would not wake her.

And then calm. Still...still once again. Nothing. Not even the faint supressed sobbing from which he normally suffered impeded his thoughts tonight; just the question. The one question that was always there, always unanswered, always eating. The one question and the the one statement from which Ewan could never escape, not on his brightest nor his darkest nights. How could one achieve so much and yet be so unhappy?