Arthur remembers his mother once telling him that nobody is every really gone. They're everywhere around you. You can feel their presence in the forests. Hear their voices on the wind. Everyone returns to the earth from which they came but some of them were made from stars.
And maybe, just maybe, he was as well.
He had believed her then as many four year olds do but after her death. After his father came to collect him and he began down this path; he lost that wide eyed wonder. That belief in there being something else. It still appears every so often. A whisper of her voice when he meets new people. Subconsciously he categorizes them, dreams filled with visions of plants, animals, and stars.
Charles is the trees. Roots deep in the earth, steady and strong.
Tilly is the deer. Beauty and grace.
Hosea was the wind. Soft as a breeze or as strong as a gale.
Lenny was a star. Brilliant in the way it sparks in the night sky.
All the ones that came before and all the ones that came after. He sees them in everything now. He hears their voices echoing back at him in the song of the birds and the light of the moon.
He had thought that he would be alone in the end.
That when he goes he would just fade to black.
But here on the mountain as he watches the sunrise he knows he isn't alone.
Not anymore.
He isn't afraid because they will always be with him and he with them. And as his body fades in the light of the rising sun, he sees all their faces once more. They feel his touch on their arms, on their faces. A ghostly embrace that warms their souls. He leaves a piece of himself with them. He knows they'll keep it safe till he sees them again.
Are you ready to go, Arthur?
Yeah… Let's ride
"You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them…In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night…You - only you - will have stars that can laugh."
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince