Remembrance & Departure

I collapsed down on the gentle incline of the foothill overlooking the village. Crossing the mountain took everything I had, which wasn’t much, given that I hadn’t had a single bite to eat and the sun was already at its zenith. At my side stood Kaiser, quiet and resolute, as he always was. His gaze was directed into the distance. All I could be bothered to do was watch as the thick grey clouds lumbered across the sky. They were like half-sleeping mammoths, dawdling around in an empty blue plain.

“Do you see the child beneath the tree?”

I glanced over at Kaiser. He shook his head at me and pointed towards the village. Sitting up, I scanned the landscape, the thatched rooftops and the dirty streets. Indeed, on the outskirts of the village, there was a person crouching beneath a tree. I couldn’t see perfectly, but he couldn’t have been much older than myself. All he did was sit there, looking out at the mountains surrounding the village.

“He seems peaceful.”

“Perhaps that is true. But, moreover, that child is lost. Before he was resting, he was fighting… His fists struck the rough bark of the tree until they were covered in blood. It was only after he had exhausted himself, all the strength he could muster, that he surrendered and laid down. His efforts accomplished nothing.”

“Fighting himself, I take it?”

“Only because there’s nobody else. Without anyone to hear his cries, he was in a prison, and he had to break out, to break something– Even if that something was himself.”

“A pity. But we aren’t going to help him, are we?”

“It’s not that we aren’t. We can’t. People can hardly save themselves, much less others.”

“Was it not you who offered your hand to me when I first ran away?”

“I’d hardly call that helping. And, even then, master-pupil relationships are fading away, are they not? A disease of loneliness has swept across the world. It’s a self-perpetuating solitude that slowly suffocates your heart.”

I felt my brow furrow.

“So what exactly is stopping us from reaching out to them, from lifting them out of that solitude?”

Kaiser narrowed his eyes.

“Until a cultural revolution turns this world on its head, there’s no stopping the extinction of happiness. How can you resuscitate a body that’s already bled out?”

“Try harder! Get to them sooner, save them while there’s still a chance! Is it so wrong to believe? Are we all just sitting ducks?”

“Don’t you understand? People aren’t connected anymore. We’re all lost at sea. A fog that only gets heavier and heavier sits atop the rolling waves, like a pitiless warden. We’re all barely staying afloat, and we’re scared. Scared of what might emerge from the fog. How can you help somebody who wants nothing to do with you?”

All I could do was grit my teeth.

“The space between one man and another is a vast barrier, and an unbreakable shield. It’s the only security we’ve got. We have no lighthouse, nothing that unifies us, nothing we can trust. In a world like this, trying to make connections again will only lead to more pain. Do you know what happened to our lighthouse? We kept making it taller and taller, and it collapsed under its own weight. We talked about this a long time ago, didn’t we?”

I faltered. The memory clicked.