Found:
A fantasy fulfilled.
I don't know what I expected. Well, I do. I know exactly what I expected from going back there and it wasn't this!
I expected him to be cold, arrogant, haughty, uninterested, indifferent to my return, unmoved by my success. I expected him to stare at me like he used to, looking past and through me as if I was barely even there to his eyes. I did not expect him to be staring up at the ceiling with eyes that are unable to see at all.
If I know my corpses, and I do, then he couldn't have been dead for more than a week. A week! He couldn't have waited just a little bit longer to shuffle off his mortal coil? He couldn't have lingered just a few days more to have one final confrontation with the daughter he neglected and ignored for over three decades? Selfishness or vindictiveness? Does it matter? The outcome is the same. It's just one more in a litany things he would never give me.
And her, so long dead now that even her bones wouldn't be worth the kicking. Lying there in the dirt, using Antoth's bench as a grave marker! If I'd had the energy, I'd have dug her up and crushed her hateful skull beneath my boot! Pfah! Not that it would have made much difference.
I know that so many others put such great stock in the remains of the dead, that somehow all the horrors they perpetrated in life no longer count as such once they leave this realm behind.
I don't believe that for a moment.
I don't believe that the slate is wiped clean or that being dead suddenly makes them a better person. I know that the effects of their deeds, good or ill, continue to resonate with those still living. I don't forgive her because she's dead. I don't like her because she's dead. I'm not going to pretend that she was anything other than she was simply because she stopped breathing.
At least one joy came out of it all. I got to burn down that house with him still inside! And no lives were taken in the process, I got to live a dream and remain guilt-free. Perhaps the hateful duo finally did something good for me after all.
Putting them out of my mind for a moment, I also went back to Antoth's hut. It's gone now. The source of my only childhood joy is little more than a damp depression in the earth and a few scattered stones, but it still made me smile.
Sometimes, I wonder what happened to him. I wonder why he left me like he did, with no word or direction. I wonder if he'd be proud of me, if he'd be happy about the use to which I've put his teachings. Probably not.
Oh well. Onwards again. I've several more stops to make before I can turn my feet back to the north.
