Now He Is Gone

It all comes to an end, eventually.

He was the one who showed us the way to go, revealing so many of this tired world’s secrets. He showed us there was still wonder in this world. So much left to see and do, even though this world has turned for all those billions of years.

He has gone now, lost to us. His ashes blow on the wind, taking him far away from us. He is gone, even though we hold those memories we have of him close, as if he was still here. We, the family no longer have him, but we have our memories of him, and of the stories he told us as we gathered at the end of the day around his fire.

He grew too old to work with us, too frail to spend time out where the work was done. But he never became a burden to us, not even in the hard times. Those stories he told were more valuable than crops or meat, or even the beer he needed to wet his throat as the stories curled around the fire’s smoke and lost on the breezes that blow.

He would tell us stories of storms and trials, heroes and legends and how the old gods failed us and were exiled from this land. Then he would look us all each in the eye, as he said this. His eyes burnt with conviction; the eyes of those who know what is really true. Saying we should never ever, when he was gone from us, allow those gods to return. For – as he said – the world is wondrous enough without them.

Although, without him to tell us such tales, the world does seem so much emptier these days.