Return

To return to the sweet sound of a cheering crowds, to trumpets and fanfare, this is what we most looked forward to as we made our journey home. We were heroes, and after all that fear and silence, we just wanted some noise and excitement and celebration. We wanted people to know what we had done, that we had saved them. We smiled to ourselves and to each other as we trekked onward. It was silent still, but it was okay because we knew what was to come.

We were exhausted and covered with dirt and grime as we reached the crest of the final hill. The sun was just starting to rise across the city. We saw the familiar yet nearly forgotten white walls shining brightly, beckoning us and welcoming us home. We could hardly contain our excitement, and as exhausted as we were, we raced down the hill, sprinting the last 200 yards, to reach the place we had longed for for so long. It was just as we left it.

Smiles beaming on our mud-caked faces, we gasped for breath as we reached the entry gate. We stood there for a moment, collecting all the thoughts and emotions flooding through our bodies, and then, slowly, but in an instant, all joy and hope drained from our bodies. We finally looked up at the guard who was looking down at us, and where we expected to see a smile of excitement, we saw a look of confusion. He stared at us a moment longer, and then spoke words more painful than any wounds we had sustained on our long and arduous journey: "Who are you?"

We had left that place almost 15 years ago, vowing to do whatever it took to save our city from the destruction that was foretold against it. After so many years of fighting and searching, we had found the hideous source of our distress and destroyed it, and then spent a full two more years traveling back. In all that time, we never lost hope because we knew we were fighting for a land that loved us and that we loved back. But now, in a moment, it became clear that what we thought to be true was not.

We had been warned there would be pain beyond any we had imagined, but we had assumed that would be in the journey and the quest itself, not now, not in our glorious return. It should have been a glorious return, but it was not. The city had forgotten we even existed, had left behind them any thoughts of danger, just as we had left behind the dead body of the very real danger that would have devoured them all.

Even our families had forgotten us. Our wives had given us up for dead long ago and found new husbands. Our children had grown old without us and found husbands and wives of their own. Our once faithful friends had found new men to drink with. Even the animals had either died or forgotten who we were. No one remembered and no one seemed to care, and those who did care cared only is as much as they wanted to keep on forgetting.

We forced some to hear our tale, but that's just what it was: forced. They didn't want to face the fact that we had saved them and they had forgotten us. Even worse, they didn't want to face the fact that they had needed saving at all, for if they admitted to that, they would be to blame for our non-triumphant entry.

We spent the best years of our lives in constant peril, only to return to this? Sad and rejected, we roamed the streets of the city that was no longer our home, ignoring the eyes of those who didn't want to see us. Time, in this case, did not heal wounds; it created them. It would have been better to continue in the dream, the hope, the lies. It would have been so much better to go on the quest, for we still loved these people, no matter how much they now despised us now, but after the mission was accomplished, never to return at all.