“I thought I had found you at last,” he said, his eyes far away, “but the you I had in mind, the you I remember…” he didn’t finish, only stared up at the stars.
I let my eyes wander over the furrowed field I’d sown that day and sighed. Death waited in the earth, and life from death. Life and death, season by season, and the land prospered.
“Don’t you miss home?” he asked.
“Home?” I asked. “I was born on the ship. I—we,” I corrected. “We both saw her devoured in flame. I should have destroyed the beacon,” I admitted. “It would have been better for you if I were just dead. I know you can’t help but see this as anything other than…”
“Other than what?”
“Your loyalty,” I said, “to an idea, a hope, an eternal campaign for which generation after generation dies—no fruit has come from that seed. What I plant, I see it grow. I am nourished, and it nourishes others too. You speak of glory, of palaces and temples and monuments. I only want the earth, and even if I returned to your war, you would feel that betrayal every day that my heart was no longer yours.”
His body had grown stiff, and he was clutching the porch’s railing with white knuckles.
“You swore an oath,” he said.
“And I’ll keep it,” I said, rising from my chair. I looked up at the stars. “I’ll die up there for you, as you would for me.”
He turned toward me, his face white, his frown deep.
“Thurmander died once already. Lost with his ship. He was a good—he was the best of friends. I think you understand,” he tried to smile. “I would have done anything to save him, even go on a wild goose chase after a faint beacon years and years later. He was about twenty years younger than you twenty years ago, but you are an old man with grey hair.”
And like that, he was gone, teleported away to the dark shadow passing over the stars.
Tale Told 