He always heard the tick. It was constant.  The sound first found him as he clung, his five fingers to his father’s one, as the tall man dragged him through the street of sirens and red turning lights.  It was the only sound after the roar and the fire and the scuff of cheap shoes running away.  It was all that was left as he shook his father through the interminable minutes in that alley.  Now he carried it with him. He worried once that it was making him crazy, but when he took it off, the roar came back and the cries of the women in black haunted him.  So it was that it calmed him. Kept the old man near in a way.  Sometimes those he met in the city would compliment him on it, reach out a finger and say, “Fine piece.”  And he’d just stare at it and the ticking almost wasn’t enough. Yet something or someone, a voice on the wind, would call him back and he’d nod a smile.

 “Keep living,” the voice said.

From all the carnage that raged outside in the world, the mountains gave them refuge and respite.  The animals that grazed about the hill felt no fear, with jaws grinding mush in circles from sunup to sundown.  You see theirs was a place of green, a home of love built by the two.  The beams had been raised on their own shoulders.  The roof they laid held strong under the rains.  Potatoes from the side yard made their barefooted babies grow tall.  Seasons passed.  Soon it was the tall children who fed the animals and repaired the fences.  The two had white hair when the sound of engines and bullets exploding carried over the hill. For the first time in thirty years, the two's eyes wore sorrow.

The room rang with warmth and wine.  Voices cried out and tones of laughter sung between. Outside, the fireflies played before the trees and the moon poured down to take all fear from the dark.  That was her gift to them.  It was a reunion of nothing more than friendship.  A class in history for smiling peasants.  None of them had shown ambition to take the top.  They just wanted a river.  Now old stories held a handful of ears but nothing compared to the thin man with dark hair that held the guitar in his hands.  He picked the body up with a resonating thump and the room fell quiet.  All eyes came glued to the shine of the wood. Transfixed at the picking fingers.  And he sang an old song. It was a song their fathers had sung before them when the river wasn’t quite so wide.  His fingers turned to pick and he strummed a rhythm that matched the trees swaying behind him.  The ones about him stood with glasses raised.  The thin man sang on, growing louder by the verse, voices joining in strong.  His song burned through the night.  At once it ended, and all took a silent dip of wine or whiskey and looked down and thought things they reserved only for their own minds.

There was too much gravel on the side of the road on account of the ice.   Another one with blue lights flew by, so he hid his face, and then he was alone again.  The gravel slowed him.  A town some ways east was looking for him, but he was far enough away now. Search parties hiked in the morning light and called his name.  He thought he might have heard them, and it made him smile to think of them all.  He liked the feeling. Happy to see it was different without him.  Yet he didn’t think too far. Didn’t consider what it meant when they stopped looking.  He was still young, invincible, and, more than anything, the center of everything, because after all his eyes were the ones seeing right?  So he didn’t consider what it would do to the people who loved him, and the town that had taken him for granted. He didn’t consider that their lives would go on without him, or that everything he ever loved would be lost to him forever because you can’t just go back.  No, he didn’t consider, he only smiled to himself and hiked further away.  The search parties reluctantly quit after two weeks. He was as good as dead, for he could never go home.