Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:58 am
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For years, the younger one kept asking how far.
How far to the village.
How far to the next.
How many days, how many hills, how long until
they could finally stop and call somewhere theirs.
The older one never gave a number.
It wasn't unkindness. It was something harder to explain —
that the question had an answer once, and chasing it
had cost more than it was ever worth.
So they walk.
The wagons creak behind them,
slow as they have always been.
The dogs run ahead and come racing back,
overjoyed each time, as if the road
were the best thing that had ever happened to them.
And somewhere on this green slope, without deciding to,
the younger one stops asking.
Not because the village stopped mattering.
But because something quieter arrived in its place —
the wind, the grass, the small warm shape of a dog
leaning against a leg at rest.
The company of someone who would still be walking
beside them tomorrow.
The village will come. Villages always come.
And then there will be another road, and another after that.
That used to sound like a burden.
Today, for the first time, it sounds like a gift.
The road is long.
Let it be long.
Welcome, traveler. Rest here a while.