“When you left, some pigs were still inside the pen. They broke through the fence and escaped. I thought they would die in the woods. But they didn’t.”
Roger looked around.
Behind the pigsty ran a small stream he’d never noticed before. Banana and sweet potato trees had grown around the area. There were coconuts and various wild plants.
“They learned to survive in the mountains,” Mang Tino said. “And they continued to multiply.”
Roger stared at the herd. Some of the pigs raised their heads, almost as if they recognized his presence even after so many years.
A large pig approached the fence. Its skin was reddish, and it had a scar on its ear—the same scar as one of the first piglets he’d bought long ago.
“That…” Roger whispered.
“That was the very first pig I raised.”
He felt a tightness in his chest.
Everything he thought he’d lost… was still there.
Not just alive, but grown.
“And what will you do now?” asked Mang Tino.
Roger remained silent.
He looked at the mountain. The pigsty. The pigs pacing calmly in the grass as if the five years that had passed had meant nothing.
Slowly, Roger smiled, for the first time in many years.
“Perhaps,” he said softly,
“my dream is not over yet.”
And in that moment, he understood something he once thought he’d lost.
Sometimes, even if you give up on a dream…
there are moments when it still awaits you.
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