Day Six-Ninety-Three: This can't be right

So that's how Dragomir's doing. How about the other half of the coma equation? Most people probably wish he was the unconscious one.

I've known Traveller longer than most members of this crew, 'cept Antonio. That isn't a hell of a lot more, I'll grant, but I did run into him several times while I was on the road with Nagi. (Damn her black soul.) He nearly killed me on every occasion, but not through malice. He's just built to be destructive. Friendly, happy, as dumb as a puppy, but so damned destructive. It's no wonder he was one of the Imperium's most wanted felons.

Yet ever since Dragomir fell into this coma, Traveller has become quite meek. He no longer runs around everywhere with nonsense ramblings on his lips. Instead he tip-toes through the Dauphine in relative silence, helping Libby tend to her husband as he sleeps away the days. He fetches food and water, he changes Dragomir's bed whenever Dragomir has been moved, he sweeps Dragomir's room, he's cleaned Dragomir's bandages at least a few times... hell, I once caught him telling Dragomir a story when they were both alone. Didn't catch the details of the story and I'm sure it was dumb, but...

To an extent I can understand this behaviour. For all his idiocy, Traveller is not a bad person. Catch him at the right time, and under the right circumstances, and he's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. His problem is focus. Traveller's mind wanders, much as his name would suggest, and his constantly-changing decisions get him in trouble. 

For example:

About a year ago - I was with the gypsies for the first time, after ditching my family in the Imperium - I came across Traveller trying to decide what he wanted for lunch. I was in the middle of chores, cleaning the dirt off the gypsy caravan's giant toads with a sponge-stick, and I found Traveller sitting on one of them.

"Trav, c'mon, I need to clean. Get off that thing." I waggled the stick in his face, though warily.

He hummed and hawed, smile wide and curious. "I'm hungry. I've got a biiiiiig hole in my stomach. Do you have any food? Can I eat it?"

"No, I don't have any food." I tried to poke him off the toad's back with the stick. "Off. Off!"

Traveller didn't move. Instead, he grabbed the end of the sponge-stick and stared at the pole with happy intensity. "I think this is a baguette. Isn't it? I like baguettes. My mom used to make baguettes. Or was that my aunt twice removed?"

"Let go!" I tried to twist the pole away from his grip. I might as well have been wrestling with a hippopotamus with both arms tied behind my back for all the progress I made. 

Grinning dopily, Traveller murmured one last "baguettes" before sinking his teeth into the end of the sponge-stick. His jaw is not quite so strong as the rest of his body, so he only left some teeth marks in the wood, but I was nevertheless flabbergasted. I gave up and let him have the damned stick.

"Om nom nom," he said, chewing. He looked quite content... for about three seconds. Then, abruptly, his head whipped around to stare at the rest of the caravan, splayed out along a snow-speckled dirt road. "I jutht heab thumeone paying dithc whilwers! I wuv dithc whilwers!"

I took a few steps away. "What in the hell are you - "

Too late. Traveller vaulted off the toad, the sponge-stick still in his mouth, and ran off down the road. In his excitement to play 'dithc whilwers' he accidentally upended one of the wagons, plowed through a snowbank, waggled his bare feet in the air, and ultimately wound up building a fifteen-foot-tall snowmand. I'm quite certain the snowman would've been abandoned halfway through construction, as well, but it only took Traveller about a minute to roll up sufficient amounts of snow.

Focus.

You get the point. He has no focus. Traveller is utterly elemental. He comes and goes, and in his coming and going he gets into trouble. He can't focus on a normal life. So how in the hells has he managed to focus on Dragomir's wellbeing for the last two weeks? How has he not trotted off to some inane activity by now?

Much as the events of this month have... disturbed me... and I'm only talking about Dragomir being unconscious, mind, nothing else... I think Traveller's sudden ability to concentrate has me worried the most. What changed?

Hrm.

Maybe I should have a chat with the guy.

Sincerely,

Logan the Thief