"You know what sucks, man?" Hyde asked with a thick cloud of smoke around his curly head.
"What," said Fez, and started coughing wildly. He looked up with a glazed look in his eye and a dopey grin on his face. "I love circles."
Hyde flicked a small object across the table. It missed Fez but Randy caught it before it rolled off the table.
Randy's vision was a little hazy and he peered at the tiny metal object for a while. "Huh. A ring...," he mused as he recognized the object. "You know what? Donna's got two of these hanging around her neck. She takes it off before I come home, but I know that she wears them." He looked forlorn and then burst out in giggles.
"Hey lemme see that." Fez snatched it out of Randy's hand and held it close to his eyes. "Silver," he said. "And oooh. It's got a purple stone. Semi-precious. Amethyst?"
Hyde stared at him with his mouth open. "How d'ya even know this shit, man." He grabbed it back and gave Fez a disgusted look.
"Hey don't judge a man who likes his jewelry you dirty burnout." Fez brightened. "Does that mean you're gonna marry Sam? Again?" He snickered.
"No dillhole. This one's the ring I got Jackie."
Understanding dawned and Fez nodded sagely. "Ahhhh. I see I see. I remember now. The promise ring. And the stone's purple 'cos it's her favorite color," he concluded wisely. Remembering who fed the idea to Hyde in the first place, he added, "Eric's a romantic sonavabitch."
Hyde frowned. "I can't believe you remember this shit, man." He looked morose for a while. "Man, I miss Forman, man. If he were here I bet this shit with Sam wouldn't seem half bad. And I'd probably still be with Jackie." He looked up sharply as he realized what he had said.
None of the guys seemed to have noticed.
"I miss sex," said Randy sadly, then coughed and back tracked. "Uh, like, daily. I miss having sex daily."
Fez pushed his lip out. "I miss Kelso."
No one paid him any attention.
Eric pulled himself up the rocky ledge and turned around to haul Morathi bodily up with him. He helped a visibly exhausted Morathi sit down and turned to look out at the breathtaking view down in front of them. A line of pointed peaks stretched out along the left and right sides of where they were, and snow capped the tallest one in the distance before them. The sun was blinding at that altitude, and the air was thin.
Morathi's breathing was labored and Eric tried to hide his concern.
The trek up had been a difficult one. It had taken six days and Eric started off carrying two rucksacks, his and Morathi's, but when Morathi started to struggle with the journey, he had loaded what was necessary into one pack, and despite Morathi's initial protests, he had also for a good part of the journey, carried Morathi himself.
But despite his apparent weakness, Morathi had guided Eric unerringly to this exact spot; it was as if he had committed the trail up the mountain to memory.
A memory that was twenty years old.
"It's beautiful here," Eric said quietly.
Morathi didn't reply, and when Eric turned his head to look at him, he saw that the old man's eyes were fixed in the distance and glazed with a sheen of tears.
"Thank you," he said to Eric with a shaky breath.
Eric nodded and set his lips in a tight line. He sat with the old man for a long while, admiring the view, and the sense of accomplishment of being able to grant Morathi a long-held wish.
"She always wanted ta fly - mah wife. So she could see da world beyond Africa." Morathi said suddenly. "So when she died ah climbed up here and scattered her ash-es in da wind." He swallowed and turned to Eric, and Eric noticed that Morathi looked even older and more worn-out, his face more lined and drawn.
"Ah hope that ah have given her her wish."
"You have," Eric murmured. A chill wind blew, and Eric angled his body to block it from Morathi.
"Not a day goes by dat ah don't blame mah-self... But dah past is past. Nothing ah can do fer eet, fer her, anymore..."
He placed his hands on his knees, and hoped Eric would finally accept and see what he was trying to pass on to him. "What's in yer head, eet cannot hurt you anymore," he said gently. "Don't look to dah past. Fer there is nothing there. What ees here ees now."
Eric stared out at the range of mountains before them, and even Morathi could not read anything of his thoughts.
"Air-reek," he said and there was a mild sense of urgency in his voice. He reached a shaky hand out to touch Eric's sleeve, and repeated, "Don't let yer past interfere with yer present. Or you w-eel never run away from it." His voice turned grave, "No matter how fast you run."
An eagle soared high in the sky, its sharp call echoing off the peaks below.
"You are one man. You cannot change dah fates of those whom dah die has already been cast."
It was a hard truth to accept. But it was a truth and Eric had to learn to accept it.
They both sat in silence, lost in pasts and regrets of their own.
Eric leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. "Morathi…," he began. "Do you ever wish that everything could have turned out differently?"
The old man gave a guffaw, and it turned into a short spasm of coughs. He took a moment before he replied. "Some-times, yes."
He sighed and took his eyes off the clouds mingling with the crests of the mountains across the valley.
Staring at his wrinkled and gnarled hands, he continued, "But if things had turned out differently and ah had mah Ema beside me, and mah child with her... Ah wouldn't have had dis family dat ah love with all mah heart now... Even if dey were with someone else and not with da woman mah heart chose."
He glanced up quickly at Eric, and hastened to add, "Do not misunderstand. Mah time with Ema ended when she chose ta take her life. And our child… Our child was doomed from birth.
"Perhaps ah wasn't meant to have had her and our child," Morathi said, unknowingly echoing the words that Jackie had said to Eric months before after the fire. "But ah have chosen to be thankful dat dey were both even in mah life, then to have nev-ah had da chance ta know them at all."
Morathi's words stirred Eric, and he bowed his head with respect at the stoicism of this man and his fellow Africans. They were connected, him and Morathi, by a history so similar that it bore a kinship between them both.
He grieved for the tragedy that had marred Morathi's life: the execution of his hours-old Mingi son, his wife's subsequent suicide, that had him leaving his native Ethiopia, his tribe, everything that he had known and was familiar to him, to make a new life for himself there in Kenya instead.
Morathi closed his eyes to turn his face up to the sun. "When mah time comes—"
"No, Morathi," Eric interrupted quietly.
But a small smile pulled at the corners of Morathi's lips. "Death comes to us all, " he reminded Eric. "When mah time comes," he repeated, "take me up here and give mah ash-es to da wind. Ah've lived too long is dis world without mah Ema by mah side."
Eric pulled in a deep breath and pulled on the forbearance that he was fast adopting from the African people.
He nodded.