Skylight died, ember-light fading under violet cloud cast in west; shadow-shades of lighter violets in the east without contrast of the last of flame. Light faded. Night songs began sonorous and raising from the woods and waters: frogs in the shallows, cicadas in trees, early crickets in the fields.
In tent beside, he listened to his sons; their talks of sports and what they dreamed to be when they grew up. He listened to it all, absorbed the last of visions.
He was grateful for it all: the day, the living, the doing, the making and happening of experience. It would not always be like this, and the knowing gifted present greater worth.
Late afternoon, his sons asked to camp. He was tired—but it wouldn’t always be like this. This he knew, and so they went: living moment and making memory while there and wanted.
He smoked a cigar as his boys settled into tent and sleeping bags. Embers on cigar end lit brighter than the sky: light burning through column ash. He knocked it away, and face of flame exposed. He breathed the fire, felt it take, exhaling into cloud.
“Dad, are you almost done?” his youngest son asked.
He was wanted, to be their companion, their guard.
It wouldn’t always be like this, but tonight it was. He finished the cigar, drawing last of fire and flame then let it settle as the night.
It wouldn’t always be like this, but tonight it was; and so he went: becoming what they wished of him in present that would linger ever as a memory and story—of them, time and moment shared—living the part for which he was called.