From work completed and making the rounds:
He rubbed the heel of one hand against his eyes, turning his face to catch the sun. Winter had not been that cold, certainly not what he’d expected, though it had been years since he’d spent a whole winter in these latitudes and he knew there’d been changes, and of course they kept the long-term rehabilitative care facility a touch on the warm side for the benefit of guests whose nervous systems had enough to deal with without the stress of the constant damp chill he still associated with marine climates. Even so, the heat of the sun was a welcome novelty, one of a small number of things that gave him unalloyed pleasure. He could feel himself growing toward it, plantlike, and though he felt conflicted about this, unable to accept that he was in the world, still, again, in spite of whatever dark thing had happened, he made an effort to spend as much time as he could outdoors, just sitting there, feeling the sun grow stronger and himself with it. They’d started encouraging him to go out alone now, to take paths that led beyond where you could see the main building once he’d gone once or twice with Maya or one of the nurses, and the one that led to a clearing overlooking the sea, facing southwest, was his favorite. In the afternoon it caught the light just before the sun’s ambit was clipped by the trees as it slipped down to the north. Soon it would be the equinox, and then you might even start to see it meet the horizon, on clear days. The flat stones at the end of the path, where it met the headlands running down to the water, were charred as with the traces of some ancient firepit, and the warmth they gave off, late in the afternoon, made him think of sitting at a hearth, drying himself after getting caught out in a storm.