The Final Goodbye

To Care

He knew them.

He always knew them.

He never met them. Never spoke to them. Only watched them. Listened to them.

But he knew them.

In the middle of the countryside, miles away from the closest village, lived a woman and a boy. The boy was old enough for double digits but not too old so as to know everything yet.

For months, he watched them go about their day-to-day lives. Awaken as the cock crows, feed the cow, pig, and hens, collect the eggs before washing up for breakfast. The rest of the day consisted of chores like tending the garden, cleaning, doing the wash, as well as time set aside for the boy to learn his lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The boy didn't like his lessons and often complained.

"But, Mama, why do I have to learn it?"

"A learned man is a respected man."

"Like Papa?"

"Yes, and won't your father be surprised by all you've learned when he comes home from the war."

"Mama, when is Papa coming home?"

"Soon, sweet boy. Soon."

The boy's father didn't sound like his own, but he still feared the day the man returned. In his experience, fathers weren't that great. Also, continuing to watch this little family while avoiding detection from another person would be even more difficult. After a massive rainstorm the first month, he frightened the woman and the boy when they noticed his footprints near the home. He laid low for a few days, keeping his distance, until they accepted that it was just some curious soul passing through that meant them no harm.

As time went on, the more he began to yearn. He wanted what they had—a normal life with someone to look out for him, to care about him.

A place where he belonged.

Family.

One day, it all changed.

Reports from the closest village warned of a change in the tide. War wasn't waning, it was getting worse, and the opposing forces were pillaging towns as they passed through.

"What if they come here, Mama?"

"Then we'll give them all we have and they'll leave."

"But how will we survive?"

"We'll make do. I have a bit stashed aside for a rainy day."

"Will Papa come home and make them go away?"

"Your father is probably too far away to help."

"I wish he would come home."

As far as he could tell, the man never came back from war. In those times, no one sent word to families back home if a soldier met his fate. One simply waited for the war to end and hoped the family member returned after.

Soldiers discovered the quaint little home two days later.

The woman quickly offered everything they had in 'support' of the war effort, and even offered the home for them to sleep in for the night while she and her son would use the small shelter for their animals until they moved on.

Since he used the small animal shelter to sleep every night, he was forced to find other sleeping arrangements himself.

That was a mistake he would come to regret for hundreds of years.

A mistake that would live on in the horrors of his mind to torture him daily as he sank into a dark pit of despair.

Arriving the next morning to a destroyed homestead and the strung up bodies of the woman and child to serve as a reminder that war was ugly and the soldiers could take and murder and destroy anything they wanted eviscerated him.