CHAPTER 27: Release and Return


The lights in the bedroom had been dimmed, and an atmosphere of aged and old memories hung thick in the air. A small candle beside the bed burned steadily in a vain attempt to add warmth to the otherwise cold gray-blue hues filtering into the room from the twilight outside.
"Unc.?"
"Yeah, Skip?"
"Thanks... for being a great uncle."
Skippy's withered paw went limp inside of Andy's as the squirrel exhaled his final breath. His wife, Sandy, buried her head in Skippy's fur quietly, the candle light illuminating Andy's face, a look of cold emptiness upon his white cheeks, turned yellow from the dim light of the candle. His eyes stared blankly ahead of him, fixed on some invisible point in some other dimension, lost in a search for answers. And, for the third time in his life, Andy wept bitterly, watching his family slowly disappear around him.
Father and son sat on the lawn in front of Slappy's old tree, their identically colored tails lying on the grass behind them. The two silently tried to comfort each other. Anthony had sensed, though, that his father's recent somber mood had been deeply enhanced by Skippy's passing.
"You'll have to go through this with me too, won't you, Dad?" he asked.
For all of Andy's hoping and wishing, Anthony had never received any of his father's unique powers. He had aged perhaps a bit slower than a natural toon, but Anthony had not been immune to time's arrow. He had been born a natural toon, Andy's gift to the world he had come to call home, a gift that would eventually disappear from his life as the rest of his family.
Andy turned and embraced his son, speaking through his sobs. "I don't want to, son." His head on Anthony's shoulder and through tear-filled eyes, Andy looked out into the star-filled night He saw the flash of a falling star. It was the same star he had seen so many years ago--the one he owed so many years of joy to. Now he lookup up at it longingly and closed his eyes, and with his own son held close to him, finally he understood.
In the blackness of Andy's mind, the familiar pair of orange eyes he had always seen in times of trouble re-appeared and hovered before him, their chilling presence seemed to wash over him like icy ocean waves of recollection as they stared fixedly into his mind. He had always been afraid of those eyes, but now suddenly he began to feel a curious sense of familiarity in them--echoes of old and lost times, and distant calls from the past he couldn't place. The glowing eyes glinted and flashed, and in a moment of crystal clarity, Andy finally understood. He hurled himself forward at the darkness, the piercing cold, and the orange eyes in his mind. A tremendous wave of terror and numbing cold enveloped his mind and soul as the decades of emptiness and loss he had felt since Slappy's and Fluffy's deaths pounded and crashed against him, grief compounded again and again by losses, while he had remained. Then the eyes vanished, and suddenly all was quiet. The chill was gone, and Andy's senses slowly returned to him as he became vaguely aware of the feeling of his son's arms wrapped tightly around his body, holding him not only in body, but in spirit, and for all time.
He had been created as a pure being, of no one race, of no one species. He had been given everything possible to become what his heart chose, all the power, knowledge, and energy to become what he wished. His mind filled with warmth of family and of the fox within him--a calm, odd peace he was unfamiliar with, seeming somehow more real--more earthly--than anything he had previously known, as if he were now inexorably tied to the world and everything around him. Anthony shivered slightly as a crack of thunder suddenly sounded above them. He looked up into the star-filled, cloudless sky and blinked, and noticed that his father was trembling. Anthony clutched him tight, holding him close as, for the first time, he felt his father truly frightened.
Andy's eyes remained closed, his body beginning to glow and pulsate oddly, wisps and arcs of white light radiated up into the sky. He had never known, up until that point, how to take his powers and remove them--pass them off, pass them away. In his mind, he saw the past events of his life, from back when he first came to the world of cartoons, to his first legal success helping a toon fight his cartoon contract, to meeting Wile E., to making the decision to go to Earth. And, as the events of his life played in his mind like a disjointed collage of scenes, so he felt his immortality gently slipping away as his energy began streaming out from his glowing body, returning to the ebbs and tides of the cosmos from where it had come.
Eventually he opened his eyes, and saw the face of Anthony, eyes large, curious, concerned but unafraid, looking back at him. He blinked and smiled.
"Dad?"
"Yeah."
"Are you okay?"
Andy looked across to Anthony, and saw the familiar twinkle in his son's eyes he had come to cherish. "Yeah, Anthony. I... I think so."

Hours later, Andy was resting quietly in what had once been Fluffy's room. He sat, looking through an old photograph album at pictures of Skippy. The squirrel's brown face seemed to etch itself in his mind, calling to him from some lost era in some other world he had never been in. His head had been tingling oddly since he had left Anthony with Sandy. He put the book down and picked up the guitar he kept in the room. He began lazily picking away at a favorite, old toon animal ballad. As he played his gaze wandered about the room, picking up on past times and other places from the various objects around him, and coming, quite by accident, upon the book stand in the corner. Still upon on it, among the jagged and toppling stacks of other books, was the solitary book that it held decades ago, untouched by the fox. Setting his guitar aside he picked up the book. He looked at it oddly, staring sadly at the picture of the rabbit upon the cover, and with a heavy heart, he opened it. Upon the inside cover a message he had never seen before had been written:

Andy,

In the caverns of time and corridors of worlds,
we find the other always, because, my friend,
there are no boundaries--only forgotten heritages,
and those from past shall await, ever faithfully,
for your return.

Always faithful, your friend,

Fluffy.

Andy dropped the book in his lap and wiped his eyes, covering them with his paws, trying to blot out the world around him as his tears matted their brown fur, the words from his old, lost friend repeating themselves silently inside his mind, echoing to him from times long past.
The handwriting on the page was unmistakable; it was Skippy's.

The next day, the toon fox known as Andy began to age, and continued to do so from that day forward. His body slowly began to weaken. His hearing grew less sharp. His physical and mental powers had also left him, leaving him to grow into an old, happy fox, finally no different than the toons and animals around him. He had finally become a true toon.
Decades after his nephew's passing, and his own fur deeply grayed, Andy could often be found playing with his newly arrived, great grandchildren, playing games and still giving the occasional fox-back ride, an action that his grand-daughter, Melissa, insisted on scolding him over, saying that he was too old and fragile to exert himself so. This was usually followed by the old fox playfully tossing her swiftly onto his back and trotting around proudly, and making her smile once again, just as she had when she was young and Andy had played with her.
He felt very at peace and natural in his late years. His mind, though, remained as sharp as ever. He still worked as an active scientist, insisting on causing at least one small explosion in the science labs a month. And, he still spent time with Wile E., the two often lost in their own little world as they spent their lunches and many dinners sharing the joy of each other's presence. Often Calamity would join the two, and was a welcome friend to the fox, But when he wasn't working, or with friends or family, Andy would often disappear into the forest on his land and sit quietly, watching the animals around him, and reflecting happily on his long life and days long gone by. He remembered times long ago when he and Slappy would wander through the same woods, holding each other's paws as they went. And, he remembered how he use to play hide and seek with Anthony in the undergrowth when he was a child.
On a summer day underneath a large oak tree, while thinking about his son, Andy's eyes closed as he nodded off into one of his mid-afternoon naps. His face left in a smile, he was silently re-united with his long lost love, his nephew, and an old friend with long ears, who greeted him warmly and nuzzled his chest as he joined them in eternity.
At the suggestion of his son and grandchildren, and with whole-hearted agreement from the resident creatures, he was buried under that same oak tree in the woods that he was found under--the one he loved. Among those who bid him well were the coyote, rabbit, the foxes, squirrels, and numerous permutations therein of his relatives. In addition to the main assemblage, a second, less visible contingent of mourners was also attending the farewell. Sitting nearby in tree branches or on the ground, were a handful of woodland creatures including a young ferret and raccoon--the distant descendents of Lady Amber and Sasha. The two bowed their heads in silent prayer before returning to the shadows of the forest undergrowth. There was also, among the animals, a badger. She sat quietly, watching the proceedings come to a close, wondering who the fox was that her great great great grandmother had spoken so dearly of, and what he had been like. Hours later, after the sun had dipped low in the sky, and the other animals had long since departed, the badger gave a final bow to the scene, then turned and ambled off into the woods.

As the generations before him, Andy had found what he had been seeking. and had finally understood the family of which he had always been a part of. He had left the world of toons, and returned to that of the animals. It had taken him just over two hundred and ten years.