Kyle Ellis

“She had told him then that still waters run deepest of all. He hadn't known what that meant at the time, but slowly over the years, he had begun to. Some men who talked often, most men in his experience, did so because they felt an almost obsessive need for it. A need that did not arise out of inner peace, but instead inner turmoil. Men and women who did not feel comfortable with the silence and simply existing and instead felt the need to gain control of their world. Or at least pretend to by imposing themselves upon it either by action or by speech. The truth the Wanderer had come to learn from Ranger over those months and years training with him was that it was enough simply to be. And another truth too, which was that men could not often talk and listen at the same time. Instead, they chose one to forego the other. And when a man was being hunted, when the slightest sound might betray the predator's approach, or alternatively, when he hunted for food, knowing that to fail was to starve, then he learned over time to accept the quiet. To allow it to simply be. The Wanderer accepted that quiet now.”
― Jacob Peppers, Requiem for a Soldier