The Immortal Ox Rider - part 2

The old man realised that he had been an old man for much longer than he had been a young man. He had even been an old man for much longer than most people had been alive…

The wrinkles increased slowly, the eyes clouded slowly, the joints ached slowly… marching onward and worsening over the years. One day he had at last said aloud, “I hope my body doesn't keep aging like this. Soon, I won't be able to see at all.”

The habit of speaking to himself was recent. After passing so many years with not a friend left alive, he had missed the sound of voices too much, and resorted to this.

His lament was brief, and he had brushed it to the back of his mind shortly thereafter and instead chattered to himself about all of the lovely things he had seen in his time. This cheered him up.

It took many more years for him to notice that, after that day, his body really didn't age any further. His sight never diminished again. It was still quite poor, but no worse.

He was so thankful.

If only he could see his friends again, with those eyes. But he did not voice that wish. He knew in his heart that he would see them again, once this rather excessively long life had run its course.

It really was taking quite a while, but he was a patient man. Most old men learn patience, and he was no exception. You had to be patient to interact with younger people, after all, and the older you got the more people were younger than you.

He often told stories to the young people of this town. He did not make any more friends, and the young people would forget about him after meeting once or twice. Or so he thought. But, once a plague hit the town, those very same young people took diligent turns to visit the old man and care for him. The elderly were hit much harder by such things, and he was so very old that no one knew how old he was anymore, and the people worried.

He was warmed by that worry, but also a little saddened by it. He didn't mean to dismiss those young people and assume their interactions to be merely that of storyteller and audience, but he didn't want to be presumptuous either. Every person that had heard one of his stories felt fond of him. Even if they never visited for another story, they all visited now.

He had been getting by on his own for so long now that even the difficult tasks of life had some routine to him now, but he didn't turn down the generosity.

He never fell to the plague.

But everyone else did.

He was used to the gradual call of death that took those around him slowly, but this has been so fast. A matter of months. The old went first, and then the young. There was no time for funerals. No time to mourn one before ten more had succumbed. Holed up in his ancient little house with no doors, it took three days without visitors for him to realise.

What was once a full and bustling town, packed with people who cared for him, now had not a single soul to knock on his door and offer soup.

There was no one left.

The old man took his cane and made his way, painfully, slowly, achingly, out of that house and into the streets. There were so many bodies.

The old man closed his eyes and bowed his head. He knew this was the cycle. He knew those kind, warm, wonderful people would all be back in some form at some point.

But, even knowing that, he couldn't help missing them in the meantime.

He was one lone, old, soul in a town of the dead, and his body was so frail now, but there was no one else to do what needed to be done. He had to bury them.

Many animals were unaffected by the plague, and found themselves without masters, so the old man softly requested their support. A large black ox, sturdy as an oak, assisted in pulling a cart for the bodies. Even with this assistance, he had to lift the people himself. Had to dig the graves himself.

He placed each body solemnly in the cart. The hardest ones were the smallest. They were lighter to lift in the arms, but so much heavier in the heart.

It took a long time.

Seasons changed during this.

Snow was falling now, and the old man felt it in his old bones. He had been moving bodies and cleaning streets for months. He had placed the last person under the earth the day before, and he didn't flinch at the rotten flesh at all. It would all nourish the soil, bring yet more life. He knew this to be correct, yet it was not beautiful.

The old man was trying to light a fire to heat himself with, but the shake in his hands (which never seemed to stop these days) was only worsened by the cold. The flint fell from his hands more times than not. He shuddered. “If only there was a fire…” he whispered, dropping the flint again and rubbing his hands together instead, hoping for some sliver of warmth to come from the friction, but they had already gone numb a long time ago.

And then lightning struck one of the straw huts in the town, on the opposite side of the street.

The old man hobbled over to take a look, but his hands were too numb to hold his cane. He slipped on the snow several times, and each time he lifted his head to stand again he saw a growing orange on that straw house. The fire raged, but didn't spread to any other houses.

The old man finally made it closer just as the roof collapsed in on itself.

“Ah…” he said, falling to his knees again, though intentionally this time. He held out his shivering arms to the blaze. “It’s warm.”