Once there was an old man who wanted to return to the village where he was born one last time before his passing. He had left his home long ago by following one type of work after another and in so doing lost track of how far he had traveled away from the home of his childhood.
His life appeared to him as the strangest dream from which he had awoken. He was so far away that he was unsure of how to find his way back home. So he retraced his steps and went form place to place where he had worked. But after a few places he got lost. Because he was so old, some of the places where he had worked were abandoned or destroyed.
He asked anyone he could if they had heard of his village and people told him that nobody called it that anymore, not in many years, but they told him the new name. And when he came to the village by a different name, he was sure that it wasn’t his old home at all. There were no familiar or friendly faces and the village didn’t even look the same. So he moved on.
He did indeed come upon the village of his youth eventually. And he spoke with his folk and they smiled and smirked at each other as they heard his stories. He swore that they hadn’t aged a bit. All the sweet faces he had longed for were before him now. They thought him a peculiar old man who told them he came from there, when they knew he never did. They took him in anyways and cared for him. His last days were spent in bliss.
