Chapter Nine: In the Horizon

 He was standing there, looking into the horizon, lurking where his nemesis is. He had to laugh at his enemy's cowardice when he abruptly left the duel, and he is still laughing now. The way his foe portrayed his character in this important event never matched the hype of his supposed chivalry. He is a weakling, and everybody witnessed it.

Santa Claus, as the pseudonym of his adversary goes by, has something he dearly wanted, and he still wanted it more than over. The duel was just part of the plan; his desire to fight him has a deeper agenda to it, a hidden plot. He needed to get it out of the duel, but he was denied the opportunity to do so.

He suspected that Santa Claus knew about his plan, and his escape was intended to protect what he wanted away from him. He wasn't surprised. Santa Claus is a very clever person. Everybody knew that his wit and crazy demeanor save him a lot of troubles, and his courage was outstanding; yet, he was not stupid enough to fall into any trap laid out for him along the way.

This courage was so convincingly ingrained in the minds of the members of Santa Claus' society that he doubted if they instantly believe his sudden cowardice was real when he left the arena.

Although he must say that the arena was a test of ultimate chivalry, and Santa Claus all know this too well. His flight was definitely telling of something profound, maybe a secret he did not want anybody to know. His refusal to fight is in itself a revelation of a haunting purpose that he needed to carry out in the stillness of his unseen battle for a higher aspiration.

Santa Claus can never hide forever, and in some moment in the future he will need to face the music. He must confront the ghosts of his past, and in as much as he might try to avoid it, he must also face the ghosts of his future. These ghosts are very central to the secret he was dearly keeping to himself, and it was overwhelming.

But the present is already full of ghosts; nobody can really escape the reach of the perpetual yearning for the truth.

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