We arrived to the city walls after travelling through neighborhoods poor and rich, passing through streets thin where piled up, wooden homes rose several floors in height and gave the place the aspect of a chasm of misery. Out the old rusty gate, we walked in silence along walls whose decay began to seem evident. Crossing the creek with disregard for the cold water, we trudged on, away from the city, up a small hill. Grass, auric mane of a sleeping lion, swallowed our feet as we ascended.

It wasn’t at the top, but in a small ledge that would have gone overlooked if not for Dariel’s accurate indications. This one, it would take some imagination to make it out as a gravestone, were it not for the inscription crudely carved on its surface.

“For the dreams gone and lost.” I read, and for a moment, with my gaze fixed on the withered jasmines at the foot of the stone, I didn’t understand.

Then I shifted one hundred eighty degrees, to look at Dariel with eyes wide open. “You made me a grave. Why? Why did you gift me a grave if my deaths are inconsequential? Why?”

My hands were almost grabbing Dariel’s shirt. I thirsted for answers.

“It was Orphela’s idea, I carved and hauled it from the town. We placed it here during the anniversary of your disappearance.”

Fire. It burned inside. Fire of time elapsed and lost, fire of life wasted, fire of realization. Fire that caused chills to run down my spine. Fire that was far less merciful than that of Dream-Cirruin.

I yelled out of frustration, got on all fours, and started tearing the grasses out as a wild animal.

“A year! Cirruin took a whole year from me!”

“My friend, how long do you think the moss in the gravestone took to grow? And the lichen? Because the second isn’t a thing that settles in a few days or a month, Terus.”

“Two years?” I asked, my voice trembling like a man’s, and not like a dream’s.

“Four, Terus. A bit more than four, actually, but I guess a few days of difference isn’t the part that matters.”

I let myself fall upon the ground, looking sideways, downhill. Looking at the walls of the city I learned to cherish and love. Four years passed for me like a blink, or less than it.

“I am sorry, I didn’t… I didn’t know I was gone that long.”

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I turned with great difficulty, trying to move like a pebble rolling down this precious hillside, and ended face up. “Four years…” I repeated meekly. “More than forty-eight months. I could have had about a thousand reading sessions with Orphela in that time. Help you in the workshop, in the agreed twice a week (at most) schedule four hundred times, Dariel. I could have raised two dogs from puppies to adults, one after the other. I would have seen gods know how many blue and gold butterflies flutter about Orphela’s jasmines. I could, I cannot, I could and wasn’t…”

Dariel sat by my side and caressed my head. “There, there, Terus. Time gone and wasted, nobody gets back. But you are among the living once more, isn’t that good enough?”

“My maker robbed me of the life he so begrudgingly grants me. How would you feel if gods’ whims could strip you of years not of your life, but of those people you care for? I am not four years older, Dariel: I have lost four years of you, four years of Orphela, four years of Zenvo.”

The big carpenter bent over me and planted a kiss on my brow as I began bawling like a little baby. I had never cried, and as my friend held me in his arms, I learned to do so. I learned how a tear should run down my cheek. How it must feel, and how it hurts.

“What matters is that you are back Terus, or would you have preferred to stay undone?”

I gently pushed Dariel away and shifted to a standing position. “It… it wouldn’t hurt me, Dariel. It wouldn’t hurt you two further.”

My friend slapped me and I showed my teeth for a second, before pulling the head back and covering them with my hands.

“I apologize. I am not as much of a man as you think, friend.”

“Terus, never say your absence would hurt me less. Remember what you told me, that day in the workshop, when we talked about your soul?”

I averted my gaze and lowered my shoulders. I sat down next to the stone, and gave it a long stare. “When I told you I possess no such thing?”

“Exactly. What makes absences bearable for us is the idea that we will meet again one day, in the afterlife, and there won’t be no more absences after that. But to grieve for you, friend, is a task unending, or maybe unconcluded. When you disappear you are nowhere to be found, not even for gods. This, Terus, is to say your loss is one that cannot be touched by solace: we can only learn to live without you, and we did every day.”

Scrambling on my feet, I embraced Dariel. He slowly reciprocated.

“This is weird for you, Terus. To show physical affection.”

“There will come a day when you will be out of reach, together in the afterlife forbidden to me. All loses are for me like mine is to you, people. I wouldn’t get sad over losing four years otherwise. Cirruin has a few millennia of lifespan remaining. I may be forced to exist until his last day. Eternity without you, without Orphela, after having met you, wouldn’t be no life at all.”

We let each other go and I took a deep inspiration. “But you are not the only one I need to apologize for. Is Orphela at home now?”

“I reckon she should be, my dear still goes to the market around this hour, but since we had the child routine became a frail thing. Feel free to visit and wait for her at home. She’ll be surprised to see you.”

I turned to look at Zenvo. In a few steps I would be at their home once more.

“And, Terus…”

I glanced at him as he placed a friendly hand on my right shoulder.

“Thanks for coming back.”