Chapter Twelve - or maybe Eleven

There is a red glow, off in the distance. Around it nothing but the pale darkness of the earliest morning hours.

Clouds obscure the shining moon and leave only a soft glow hanging from each drop of dew in the early morning fog. The outlines of the trees blurred as he drove past them, and the shape of the forest arose out of the dissolved shapes.

I had a thought: all of us are aware of the glow. It's off in the distance, just over the horizon or beyond the forest or on the other side of the mountain. We all chase it.

Wildly and frantically we search for its source.

We invent anything we need, if it'll bring us closer. We think of any explanation, if it'll give us some idea of what we're looking for. We kill each other for it, we are jealous of those who we judge to have found it, we are annoyed by those who dismiss it.

And then a realization will be made, that this red glow has no source out there - and the hunt will abruptly end. Maybe at that point, we will stop looking around, and start looking within.

We will find that we're all we've got.

Either that or we'll all shit ourselves at the prospect of there being no objective truth, frantically scatter and trample everything in our path, searching like ravenous wolves for something or someone to idolize.

Maybe I'm being too grim.

He's home now. Safe and sound. In case you were worried. You... you weren't worried, were you? Didn't think so...