The boy parked the car outside of his grandmother’s house.

“She’s gonna be mad I took so long.” The boy said wholeheartedly.

“I’ll explain what happened.” The old man said comfortingly.

The boy eyed him suspiciously. 

“I think I’ll do the talking this time, you’re not really at full capacity right now.” 

The boy smirked at the old man, who stuck his tongue out at the boy playfully. The boy grabbed the ingredients for the gumbo, as the pair stepped through the front gate towards the house.

They could hear his grandmother’s dog barking frantically. They stepped through the doorway and the boy called for his grandmother.

“Grandma I’m back! I picked up grandpa!”

He heard no reply, only the barking of the small dachshund from the kitchen.

He walked into the kitchen to find his grandmother sprawled out against the floor, the small dachshund barking desperately in an attempt to wake her up. 

The dog turned around and barked at the boy, then returned to the boys grandmother as he started licking her face.

“Grandma,” said the boy as he knelt down and shook her, “Grandma!” 

He felt her forehead which felt unusually cold. He looked up at the old man who was standing there in shock, frozen.

“Call an ambulance!” The boy shouted, snapping the old man out of it as he hurried to the living room phone. 

The boy sat next to his grandmother, rubbing her back as he petted Norman the dog to stop him from barking. 

“It’s gonna be ok.” He kept repeating. “It’s gonna be ok.”

The boy picked up the small dog and held him close to his body.

“It’s gonna be ok.” He said again. “It’s gonna be ok.”

She was pronounced dead on arrival.

The ambulance did come, and they did take her to the hospital, attempting cpr as they wheeled her away on the gurney. 

The autopsy said it was a heart attack, years of unhealthy foods and smoking had finally taken its toll. The boy had lost his grandmother. 

The funeral was beautiful, she was very loved amongst the churchgoers she had seen every Sunday, and there were plenty of pretty flowers that seemed to form a small mountain of colors that almost reminded the boy of the giant clouds of gas he had once seen before, during his ascension.

Almost. 

Her casket was lowered down, and as all the people paid their final respects, leaving in a caravan of cars, the boy stayed. He sat in the chair provided by the cemetery, holding his grandmother’s dog, as the old man stood praying under a tree nearby.

The old man had broken down while waiting for the ambulance to come, saying that it was his fault, that this was the karma that he had brought down upon his family for killing that man. The boy became who he was in that moment, realizing that even though his pain was so sorrowful, he could not let it devour those around him.

In that moment, he comforted his grandfather.

“The choices one makes in life are theirs and theirs alone. Death is a part of life, so don’t blame himself for things that you can not control. I’m strong. You made me strong. Now you have to be strong too, so we can be strong together.”

He sat there remembering that moment, how the old man’s resilience seemed to forge itself back together in front of his face. How he apologized later at the hospital for his moment of weakness.

“The only thing that makes us weak is our inability to express ourselves with genuine honesty. You would have been considered a weak man had you decided not to share that with me, with yourself, because then you would have let it rot you away from the inside.” He said.

The old man was very proud of his grandson on that day, for he truly was becoming who he was meant to be.

“I want you to live here.” The boy told the old man as they sat around the dining room table, drinking tea, going over the last bit of expenses for his grandmother’s service. 

She left him everything, from the house to the dog, who was curled tightly under a blanket on his little doggy bed underneath the tv.

“It’s already paid off.” Said the boy to the old man. “And you can fully convert the extra back room entirely for mushroom cultivation. We can buy grow tents like they have for weed and fit them inside the room, we can utilize more space that way.”

The old man nodded in approval, sipping his tea as he held it with both hands.

“This is very good tea.” He said staring into the cup before taking another sip. “I can use the walk downtown every morning anyway, gives me a chance to stretch my legs.”

The boy smiled. “Luckily, the community college has the necessary classes I’ll need to begin my degree in Natural Medicine. Like you said, I just need some type of official paperwork to hang on the wall of the shop.” They smiled at each other with that statement. “I’ll work at the shop in the afternoons or the mornings, depending on my school schedule, and...”

The old man interrupted “And I’ll cook!”

The boy looked at him oddly.

“I can cook!” Said the old man. “It’ll be strictly ital, although, every now and again I do enjoy some good seafood.”

The boy thought about his grandmother’s spaghetti and gumbo. He was really going to miss her cooking. 

“Ok, and on some nights I’ll cook for myself.” The old man eyed him suspiciously. “Not to say you can’t cook! But I wanna try to keep my grandmothers cooking alive, even if it isn’t completely ital.” 

The old man lowered his head in acknowledgment.

The boy didn’t have a lot to clean up, his grandmother only owned but a few clothes and slept downstairs. The old man took the big master bedroom upstairs across from the boys room that his grandparents shared before his grandfather died and his grandmother moved downstairs, her knees unable to make the climb every night.

Next Chapter: The Master