For this moment he should have prepared his whole life. Every beat of the heart, all thoughts in a coherent spear flying through the mist – but he didn’t. The encounter wasn’t unexpected, it was long in coming and we all saw that. He peered into the darkness. Even though this is what he imagined, calculated, has gone over and over, he felt he stood on the edge of what he knew was true. He listened. Untamed flutters of wind, like a local storm, birds returned with quickest haste to the skies; the quick irregular thumps of hoofs imploded with great inertia into the mud fleeing for survival. Piercing screams of death penetrated through the smoke, and he stood on the edge. The river crashing loudly into itself, ready to engulf anyone, anything, never to return the breath it takes. I’m never gonna make it, he thought, I’m never going to reach that shore.. Demons took their place, reason ceased. He couldn’t hear himself think, though the roars of chaos had overwhelming voices in them – but for his own. The war had taken all his love, his grip on life, the known – gutted… the sword dripping with warm blood. Running for an emptied life, unrecognizable, for the sake of breathing, he looked at the riverbank on the other side.
No smoke, he thought, no noise either. Flowers in the brightest of colours, peace of mind, tall flourishing trees and plants with ripe fruits. As he watched in marvelled attention, from those woods a broad-shouldered figure appeared into the sunlight. His father was looking straight at him.
The fire closing in, engulfing the land, with its guilty nature and in greatest vitality, to absorb that one more soul unblinkingly – father didn’t move. Father stood there, boring his eyes into his. He heard his voice as if he were standing next to him. “Boy, remember.”
Silence robbed the storm’s presence; somehow he became at peace, confident, strong. Time trickled like drops of water from the fountain. The sudden calmness represented all of it, this change, this becoming of his. Inside him it grew, a soul he did not recognize, but felt unexpectedly familiar. The contours of his fears turned penetrable and he became one with it, took the sword in his own hands instead of it pointing at him from the void. He knew. Never has he looked more clearly from his eyes. It was then when he became. Your brother became the father..
The Realm of Indifference 