“Been through worse.”
When the brush grows too thick, I tie her off and continue on foot. My well-worn leather boots sink into the silty, sun-baked earth.
The medicinal smell of sage and pine mix in the heat as I move toward a grove of white-barked aspens. Verdant leaves whisper in the afternoon breeze.
At the clump of granite boulders scattered like bones, I sit. The grave hasn’t held up well. The wood is dark with age, edges splintered, but the marks I carved are still there.
Clemson.
One scarlet ant climbs frenetically across the rounded swatch of wood, effortlessly dipping in and out of the grooves.
Time takes everything. Everything but me.
Leaves me here to remember it.
I press my palm to the earth. Cool beneath the surface. “Been too long to recall, brother. Hope it was still worth it.”
Same words. Every time.
I stare at the name.
“Maybe you were right.” My hat comes off. Head bows. “Time don’t mean much when it never ends.”
Nothing to mark it. All the same vague flavorlessness.
Still, I haven’t changed my mind. “Staying… putting down roots gets you killed.”
But living like this ain’t much of anything either.
Maybe then Clemson was right after all.
The hum cuts through again. Sharper. Closer.
More insistent, like it could crawl beneath my skin, mix with the swirls of light hidden beneath my button-down shirt.
“Something’s different, Clemson.”
No answer. There never is.
I tilt my head, listening to something that isn’t sound.
A vibration with teeth. My flesh shivers and pulses. Deep. Wrong.
I swipe a hand across my forehead, wiping away rivulets of sweat.
“Too long for this Earth,” I mutter. “Like a fox without a hole to rest its head.”
Tempest brays from the trees like she’s warning me about the one thing I can’t escape, the foreverness of this unending loop.
“Coming.”
I push to my feet, pressing my palm once against the ground.
Hard.
“Goodbye and good riddance.”
His last words to me.
