I trudged home from the cathedral in the darkness, my feet weary in my boots, but my mind proud of the hard work I had accomplished and the greater good it had achieved. The roads had dried, the mud in places solidified into uneven ruts, treacherous beneath a man’s stumbling feet. Carriages and carts had such narrow wheels. I had seen an automobile once, the memory distant from my childhood. Some people seem astonished at the things that can change over the course of a man’s lifetime, but I’m honestly more impressed by the things that manage to stay stubbornly the same in spite of all else.

A flock of birds flew overhead, their honking and squawking resonating sharply in the spacious night. They must have been flying South in preparation for winter. I couldn’t help but wonder how much further they had to go, and what perils they might have already faced in order to come this far.

There was the shadow of a man squatting by the side of the road, a pipe in his mouth, unlit. I couldn’t see his face, but the outline of his hair was wild and unkempt. He mumbled something at me out of the darkness; I quickened my pace. He stood and followed. I could hear the scrape of his boots across the dried mud; I could hear the sound of fabric rustling, then of a belt being fastened. Had he been defecating, right there on the roadside? As his footsteps continued, staggered and uneven,  I became hypersensitive to the world around me, acutely aware of the distance between himself and I, of the exact number of steps that I would have to take before I reached the old house. Through my eyes, I was able to see the numbers, the raw mathematics underlying every shrub by the road side, every bend in the path ahead of me. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. I increased my pace yet again.

I could make out the outline of the old house in the distance.