A Curious Beast, This Two-Legged Animal...
Part the First: Shadows of Future Past
The last thing Iremember is, paradoxically, the first thing I remember.
The stars shone down from their place in the darkened heavens, unchanged and unmoved by the events unfolding below them, just as they had on countless nights before. Watching them glittering in the velvet sable of night, I could almost wonder just why we were bothering to struggle so much, fighting so hard against what was almost certainly an inevitable outcome. Then I looked to the east, where the first, faint hints of dawn were beginning to show, fading the cold darkness of the desert to the deep blue of pre-dawn.
Already, I could see the cloud of dust raised by the oncoming army. They would be upon us before the sun had crept fully into the sky, of that I was certain. By now, our own scouts were running back, bringing much needed news on troop strengths and dispositions to the generals of this cobbled-together army. I turned back to my preparations for the coming battle, ensuring all my armour was fastened tightly and my sword was honed to a razor?s edge. Nothing had changed from the last five minutes since I had checked everything.
I turned to the man next to me, a grizzled veteran of just about every battle since the Withered Aegis first came to the Prime. I?d been fighting with this squad for about five years, though I?m not sure where I had been before that. Now, with what was sure to be the final battle for the Living Races less than an hour away, it only now occurred to me I had no idea what his name really was. Everyone had called him One-Eye and likely had since long before I had joined them. It was a logical enough name, I guess, since he only had the one eye, the ruined remains of the other hidden behind a strip of black cloth. I?d just accepted the name like everyone had accepted the name I?d given. I don?t know why it was important that I?d just realised that, but I had. Something had distracted me from asking however, though I can?t remember what.
I turned to face forward once more, settling my shield better on my arm and flexing my fingers around the hilt of my sword. The sun had almost begun to touch the sky. I could make out the dark stain of the Withered Aegis? army below the horizon. They were moving quickly, much faster than a mortal army could move, though without the need for sleep or lengthy supply trains, the undead could easily march for days on end without stopping.
There wasn?t a single man or woman in this army of the Living Races that didn?t hate the Withered Aegis. Everyone had lost someone they knew or cared for to the ravaging hordes of undead. I don?t know why it was, but I knew I harboured a special hatred for the approaching army, much more so than most people, even the members of my own squad, who were known for being especially enthusiastic in their battles with the undead. I wish I knew why, but I don?t remember.
It wouldn?t be long now. I could clearly see the army now, less than a kilometre away. I called for my squad to form up with the rest of the platoon, forming the front line of the right arm of the wedge. The platoon?s standard bearer hoisted our banner high, signalling we were ready. All along the front lines, banners went up, showing the readiness of the army. Within a few minutes, the trumpets sounded and drums began and the march to meet the enemy started. In mere minutes, we would meet the undead in open battle.
All too quickly, the Withered Aegis? army was before us, their stench assailing us long before we were in range of their archers. Already, I could hear the whistle of elvish arrows streaking through the air, some trailing long strings of black smoke, the heads covered in burning pitch. The collected voices of the Living Races rose in a roaring battle cry as we charged forward, slamming into the massed front ranks of zombies, many of the first impacts splattering putrefied flesh and pulping rotting bone. Beyond that first contact, all became the seething mass of confusion that exists only in massed open battle.
I kept my squad close, fighting shoulder to shoulder in most cases, our large shields nearly interlocked, the only openings large enough for our weapons to hack, slash and stab out at the undead foe. We pressed forward through the ranks of zombies, forcing our way through to the skeletal warriors behind. Magic spells burst all around us, projectile magic deflected by our shields or luckily dodged. Sweat soaked my arming jacket beneath my armour and my sword arm was beginning to ache from swing after swing and the jarring impacts of meeting swords, shields and bones. The sun had risen high in the sky, though I barely remembered much passage of time after that first impact with the undead horde.
My world had narrowed to a very small band directly in front of me and my life had become little more than a series of strokes with my sword or moving my shield to intercept an incoming blow. There was no thought, no grace or style in this type of fighting, just the instinct to survive and to use whatever means were at hand to do so. This was all my life consisted of until I broke through into a small eddy in the battle, a brief opening in the Withered Aegis? battle lines that provided a moment of calm. It wasn?t until just then that I realised that my squad was no longer with me and probably hadn?t been for quite some time. I was alone.
It was strangely comforting, finding myself alone there, well behind the enemy?s lines with little hope for survival. It seemed fitting, almost natural, to be fighting alone. That is my clearest memory of the battle for quite some time. I know I rejoined the fight after only a few moments, fighting, ever fighting toward the back. There was something for me there, though I can?t quite recall what it was.
The next thing I remember, I had lost my shield, both of my pauldrons, my right gauntlet and bracer and part of my left greave. I was standing in a relative clearing, the masses of undead fighting around me, but leaving me alone. My sword was embedded in the ground a few feet away. Clenched in my left hand was the throat of a woman, held ten centimetres off the ground. This was what I had come for, though who she was, I can?t say. I can barely even recall her face. All I remember of her is the midnight black of her hair, razor straight and long, her evergreen eyes, glittering with coolly amused malice and the insidiously vulpine smile on her crimson lips. Her lips moved, whether she was speaking or trying to cast a spell, I don?t know. It wouldn?t have mattered anyway, there was little possibility of her drawing a breath through my clenched hand.
I drew back my fist, and even though I got the feeling that this was exactly what she wanted, I couldn?t stop myself. This was the object of my hatred. This was the reason I had fought so hard and so long and so viciously against the Withered Aegis. My fist struck her in the chest. Parchment flesh and brittle bone easily gave way to the strength of my hatred. Another hammer blow stove in her chest, my fist lodged within. Thick black ichor flowed over my hand and arm, burning with a cold beyond anything I?d ever experienced. I wouldn?t be stayed by something as petty as pain, though. So close to my goal, nothing short of death would stop me from wrapping my fingers around her frozen, motionless heart and pulling.
It was in that moment, that incredibly gratifying moment of near-triumph, which the disaster occurred. There was a flash, so bright it defied anything that had ever existed or will yet exist. Even with my eyes squeezed tightly shut, I could still see her before me as clearly as if my eyes were wide open. A moment after the flesh, the roar began. I could not actually even hear it. I don?t think anyone could, it was so loud, so low in pitch, almost as if it were the very absence of sound, the true sound of silence.
After that, there was nothing.
Part the Second: In Dreams Reborn
I placed the last bundle of herbs into my valise and snapped it closed. I picked up my sword from the end of my workbench and slung the belt over my shoulder. She?d given me the sword as a gift when I?d enlisted in the Elven Army. It wasn?t fancy or anything, but it was well-made and had served me well over the last two years. I picked my pack up from its place by the door of the small cottage and slung it over my other shoulder. I took a look around and smiled. I wouldn?t see this place for a couple months after I walked out the door. My company was being sent out on an extended patrol to investigate some reports of Withered Aegis forces moving in the east. Satisfied that everything was in place, I opened the door and stepped outside.
The morning sun was bright after the comfortable gloom of the cottage. I squinted and blinked while my eyes adjusted. I could just make her out, standing in front of the low sun, her lithe form silhouetted by the light. As my eyes finally adjusted, I was able to pick out her features; the thin, delicate line of her jaw, her full, rosy lips, set in a warm, welcoming smile, the brilliant evergreen of her eyes touched with just a hint of mischievousness that was only slightly offset by the aristocratic set of her nose and cheeks. Her fiery hair surrounded her face like a burning halo, the riotous curls backlit by the sun. She sat astride her horse like she was born to it, the young colt almost as eager to be off as I could see that she was.
I raised my hand in greeting, though it was unnecessary, she?d left the cottage only an hour earlier to prepare the horses for the trip to where we were mustering. She tossed me the reins to the great black charger that my father had given me when I had joined the Army. The warhorse was only barely suited for normal riding, aside from being notably cranky, it had been trained to wear armour and charge into the thick of battle, not casually ride along easy roads and sleep in stables every night. I?m sure the fact that I hadn?t even petitioned to join the 9th Lancers like he had had irritated him, but my father was a reasonable man and knew I preferred healing to fighting.
I swung into the saddle and nudged Black Death up alongside her horse, leaning over to kiss her briefly, ?Are you ready, Elora, my love??
She winked and smiled wickedly, ?I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to come in there and wrestle you out.?
?Perhaps I should have dallied longer then,? I purred thoughtfully.
She winked again and nudged her horse forward, throwing me a smouldering glance over her shoulder, ?There?ll be time enough for that later,? her expression quickly changed to playfully coquettish, ?If all the marching doesn?t tire you out, that is.?
I snapped my horse?s reins and kicked him to a walk, ?The day I?m too tired to enjoy your pleasures is the day I?m burned.?
She laughed her golden, musical laugh and spurred her horse to a run. I set my heels to Black Death and he leapt forward eagerly, easily keeping pace with her horse, laughing all the way.
*** *** ***
Something cold and wet hit my cheek and slid down around my chin and neck. This was the first thing I had felt in what seemed to be an eternity. I had no idea how long I had been unconscious. I?m not even sure that?s what had truly happened. It was just easier to assume that to be the case. All I really knew was that after the flash and roar, there had been a very long period of nothing, save dreams. At least, I thought they were dreams; they seemed like dreams or maybe they were just memories. It was hard to tell.
Another cold drop of water hit my cheek and slid down. My skin prickled in the cold air, gooseflesh rising over my entire body. The ground beneath me was soft and slightly yielding, smelling richly of forest loam. I was laying naked on either moss or grass; it was difficult to tell for sure. The fact that I was naked didn?t really register, or even seem important at the time, I was more concerned about not being able to hear or see. I had to touch my face to make sure my eyes were really open, which they were, but I could still see nothing, nor hear anything of my surroundings. Panic threatened to rise up then, but I bit sharply back on the fear. If I could stand in the face of the Withered Aegis, a little deafness and blindness was nothing.
Sitting up, I started carefully feeling around my immediate surroundings. Moss and leaves, mostly, though at the very extent of my arm?s reach I could feel the roots of a tree. That was a good start. My limbs felt weak, but I was able to drag myself to the base of the tree, the effort leaving me badly winded. I leaned against the trunk of the tree and just breathed for a while, my breath burning in my lungs. I knew I had to be a in a forest, though how I had gotten there was a mystery. Unfortunately, it was a question that would have to wait for another time, as I had more immediate concerns. I obviously wasn?t dead, which meant I was going to need to find food, clothing and shelter. Soon, judging by the coolness of the air. Food would be the hardest, I judged, since I couldn?t see to identify what I might have found and the chances of picking something good to eat was just a likely as picking something poisonous. Of course, if I couldn?t find clothing or shelter, then food wouldn?t even be a concern as I would die of exposure long before starvation.
I was laying there, trying to catch my breath again, concentrating on slowing my breathing. I was so focused on regaining my breath that I didn?t even notice at first but gradually, I became aware of it. I could hear my breath, wheezing and ragged in my throat, almost a roar in my ears. I blinked, it did no good, my vision remained blackness, but I was becoming aware of more sounds, faint birdsong and water dripping onto leaves, buzzing insects and the soughing of the wind. I was indeed in a forest and it was raining. I?d never been so happy to hear the rain.
If anyone had found me then, they would have thought me insane, sitting naked against a tree with my head thrown back in laughter. You never quite realise how much you rely on your hearing until you lose it. There have been very few things in my life since then, or before from what little I remember, that have brought me as much joy as the simple realisation that I was not deaf. After the joy of this realisation wore off, I simply lay my head back and listened. The music of the forest was all around me and I let it lull me to sleep.
*** *** ***
I vaulted from my saddle, landing hard and at a flat-out run. The chaos of battle swept all around me, trying to suck me in, but I had another objective. Two of the men from my platoon had just fallen to the shambling horrors we faced, they weren?t dead yet, but if I didn?t reach them quickly, though would be in a scant few moments. I dodged a couple strikes at me and grabbed up Salia?s and Radwen?s arms and started hauling them back. I mumbled a quick strengthening spell, drawing a little extra magical strength into my limbs to get the wounded back from the front lines that much faster. As highly concentrated as the battle was, I only had to drag them a few meters back before I was able to speak a short healing spell, just enough to halt the worst of their bleeding. With that much taken care of, I had a little more time to examine the extent of their injuries.
At first glance, it looked like Salia was worse off, the lower half of her chain mail hauberk was in tatters and a nasty cut across her belly threatened to spill her innards over the battlefield. Radwen, on the other hand, was only bleeding from minor cuts and scrapes, at least externally. I very carefully removed his helmet, frowning deeply as I saw the extent of the damage. He might survive, though I wouldn?t envy him his life if he did. Too often I?d seen men survive head injuries this bad only as a shadow of their former selves, if they were lucky. If they weren?t lucky, they would require someone to care for them as an infant for the rest of their lives, which, for an elf, is quite a long time.
This was the part about being a medick that I hated. I could patch people up like no one?s business, but having to make the decision of who lived and who died, that was a responsibility I could have done without. All the same, whether I liked it or not, it was a decision I had to make, and fast. I was just reaching out to touch a simple spell to Radwen that would ease his passing when Salia groaned and tried to sit up. Just that small motion undid my small healing spell of earlier and blood poured fresh from her wound. I pushed her back gently and worked a more complex spell that was part healing and part diagnosis.
I grimaced at what the spell reavealed to me. While the healing repaired some of the damage, it wasn?t nearly enough. Salia had an arrow in her back, the shaft long since broken off, but the broadhead had torn a tiny hole in her heart and she was losing blood as fast as her heart could beat. I know several healing spells and a few other utility spells, but I was far from a magic-user or cleric. Most of the healing I knew how to do was the purely conventional kind. I?d learned a few spells to support that ability, but that was all. Repairing that hole would require either a very powerful, very delicate spell that was far beyond my ability to use, or the spell I did know, a much more vulgar, much less complex spell that had one vast drawback.
I guess it wasn?t so bad that I was going to have to give Radwen the Quiet Touch, after all, at least one of them would live. I glanced up to make sure this area was still safe enough to work, which it was, we seemed to be pushing the undead back. I took a long, slow breath and spread my palms on each of the soldier?s chests, closing my eyes and drawing my focus inward. I quietly chanted the words to the spell, silently reminding myself of the motto of the Ordo Medicae.
That others may live.
I felt a brief nauseating tingle pass through me, accompanied by the last emotions of Radwen as his life-essence was transferred into Salia. Thankfully, Radwen had accepted his death as inevitable when he fell and as I drew his life force from him, there was only the sensation of satisfied pride. Of the three other times I?ve had to use this spell, only once were the final emotions not enough to completely overpower my own and all three were feelings of anger, fury and defiance. It can be hard enough managing my own emotions sometimes, other people?s is usually just too much for anyone to deal with.
My eyes flickered open to see Salia?s wounds closing, the bruising beneath rapidly fading as Radwen?s life force, essentially jump started her natural healing. After a few moments her eyes opened and she tried to bring herself to her feet, an action I stopped with a gentle hand on her chest.
?Not yet, Salia. Get behind the lines, you?re done for now,? I said, helping her to her feet and pointing her away from the fighting, ?You?re freshly patched, I don?t want you getting holes poked in you just yet.?
Salia grumbled, but did as she was told, taking a moment to pay a brief respect to Radwen. She could quite easily tell he was dead, since I was taking time to give her instructions while he lay there. They had been close friends. I knew she would miss Radwen, but she was enough of a soldier to know that now was not the time for grief. I called a junior medick over to pull Radwen?s body from the field and turned back to the battle and any more wounded.
I nearly ran face-first into Black Death as I turned, the massive warhorse having followed me back from the lines as he was trained to do. It always amazed me how quiet such a large animal could be. I climbed up into the saddle and surveyed the battle lines, looking for somewhere else to apply my skills. The battle seemed to be well in hand. We?d sustained a few more wounded, but the junior medicks were covering them.
I was about to turn away and return to the medick tent where the walking wounded were awaiting treatment when I saw it. Scarcely a hundred meters away and closing fast, a platoon of bone golems were running up, covering the ground with great strides. They would be upon our lines in no time and, as far as I could tell, only a few others had seen the approaching horrors. I tugged on Black Death?s rein and kicked him to a run, charging full tilt toward our lines. The men had to be alerted and there was no good way to do so, other than pointing out the fast-approaching enemy by charging into it.
Black Death hurtled across the field, clearing the heads of the men on the front line by almost half a meter as he leapt over them. That got people?s attention and our soldiers started to look up, seeing the terribly golems bearing down on us. I didn?t remember drawing my sword, but it was certainly in my hand now levelled forward like a lance as I charged at the bone golems. I had covered about half the distance to the platoon, in another second or two, I would be among them.
Time stood still as the blast shook the ground. A great column of emerald energy coruscated from the sky, splintering and shattering the bone golems where they stood, scattering the remains like ivory leaves after a storm. I was thrown from the saddle and Black Death reared and balked from the explosion, but just before I hit the ground, I could see her, outlined on a nearby low ridge, staff raised, emerald energy crackling around the jade head, her flame-coloured hair writhing and whipping around her head like a halo of fire.
*** *** ***
I awoke suddenly, cold and shivering, though I suspect I was shivering less from the cold and more from my dream. The forest was dim with amber light, giving the woods a copper hue. I paused a moment and blinked. I could see again. I almost hadn?t realised it, the only reason I?d noticed was the fact that the colour of the light was so different than that of my dream. For the second time since I regained consciousness, relief washed over me.
The relief was short-lived, however, as one glance at the bluish cast to my fingertips told I needed to find clothing and shelter quickly or I wouldn?t be very long for this world. Pulling myself to my feet, I tookme many longminutes to find my balance once more, my limbs felt weak and rubbery, almost as if I had been bedridden for months. I pushed that mystery aside in favour of the need to survive and stumbled off through the woods.
Part the Third: A Curious Beast, This Two-Legged Animal...
My throat was dry and raw. It felt as if sand had been poured in and used to scour the flesh. I couldn?t remember a time when I was this out of shape, this weak. I could understand my lack of physical conditioning if I was out of shape because I was overweight, but taking one look at my ribs, thinly veiled beneath the cloth of my skin, clearly showed that this was not the case. It had been two days since my last drink of water and five since I was chased from the shelter of my cave by a hungry ruxus that wanted the cave more than I wanted a fight with it. I had followed the course of the stream that was near the cave for three days, hoping to stay near to my source of water when I came to a large foul-smelling pond. I searched around for a little while, hoping for some shelter, but there was none nearby, and worse, there were signs of much larger ruxus in the area. I gave up that area as a lost cause, filled my empty stomach from the stream and started walking.
My count wasn?t exactly accurate, but it had been about 45 days since I had woken up in this forest, naked, blind and deaf. The blindness and deafness had faded relatively quickly, though that could have actually taken a day or two, I?m not sure. I spent much of that time slipping in and out of sleep and consciousness. When I had finally recovered myself enough to move with relative confidence and safety, my first priorities had been water, food, shelter and clothing, in that order. Luck was with me, as I was able to find water before much of the day had passed; the stream I mentioned earlier. Similarly, I located the cave I had been taking shelter in shortly after the stream. It?s amazing how such simple things can improve one?s outlook on life when one, literally, has nothing but their life.
With water and shelter covered, I started working on food and clothing. My cave, luckily, had plenty of loose stones and with a few hours work and several bloodied fingers later, I was able to fashion a crude stone knife. I was initially dismayed when I first struck my finger with a sharp edge of a stone hard enough to draw blood. My scattered memories were able to draw forth plenty of images of men sustaining an apparently minor injury, only to die several painful weeks later once infection and blood poisoning set in. To my amazement, the ragged gash gradually closed and healed over the course of less than an hour. While this wonder was significant, I could ill afford the time to mull it over and figure out why a cut that would normally take weeks to heal fully would close in only a matter of minutes. Like so many things since I awoke, I pushed it to the back of my mind, to be considered later, once I had the luxury of time to think about things.
The forest outside my cave was primarily cedar and pine, lofty evergreens that were probably older than the oldest elf, with scattered stands of birch, elm and dogwood in patches where the branches of the giant evergreens didn?t create an impenetrable canopy above. As I recalled, hopefully accurately, there was once a tribe of humans who lived in an area similar to this. If memory served correctly, they called themselves the People of the Kpai, kpai being their word for cedar trees. It seemed they used just about every part of the cedar tree in some aspect of their lives. About the only thing they didn?t use it for was food, though they did make cooking implements from it. This precious gem of a memory had come swimming to the forefront of my mind as I set out from my cave with my new stone knife in hand to find a way to make clothing.
My original intention had been to hunt and kill an animal and then tan the hide to use as clothing. I quickly abandoned that plan as I realised to very important facts. First, I had no memory of ever being a very good hunter and with the spotty nature of my memory and the fact that I felt so very, very feeble, I wasn?t sure I would be able to bring down an animal large enough to use as clothing. The second fact was that I, as yet, had no means of creating fire, which is rather important to the tanning process, not to mention takes a very long time to properly dry, which was a luxury I did not have. This led me to the conclusion that I was going to have to find an alternate means of finding clothing, which is what brought the People of the Kpai to mind and specifically the word kalakwahtie.
I went to the nearest cedar I could find and gouged my knife into the bark. It took some work, but eventually I had made a decent-sized cut through the multiple layers of bark to the wood beneath. I kept working at it, cutting myself a few times in the process, but eventually had made a cut about twice as long as my shoulders were wide. From there, it was a simple matter, of tugging and pulling to get the sheet started. After about half a day?s work, I had several strips of cedar bark about as long as I was tall, which I promptly took back to my cave. The People of the Kpai had a word for each and every part of the cedar tree. They named the soft, fibrous inner bark kalakwahtie. Once stripped from the outer bark, it could quickly and easily be woven into a durable, warm and waterproof cloth, which is exactly what I intended to do with it, as soon as it was dry.
I should point out that my cave wasn?t really much of a cave. It was more of a hollow created by some boulders that hadn?t moved in several lifetimes, covered in moss and lichen. The forest I was in seemed to cover the foothills of some mountains nearby. The half dozen boulders must have rolled down some thousands of years ago, probably not even all at the same time, and stopped on the small shelf of granite they covered. The cave was barely half a dozen meters deep, but, aside from the entrance, the floor was clear of moss and loam and dry, which was a big bonus in my book. I lay the strips of bark far enough from the mouth of the cave to be on the dry stone, but close enough the air would circulate over them and headed back out into the forest.
The great thing about evergreen forests is that there is food almost everywhere. It may not be the best stuff in the world, but it is edible and will fill your stomach. While I had been stripping the bark from the tree I had noticed a patch of salal bushes nearby, which is where I was headed. Salal berries are small, dark purple things, usually less than a centimetre across, but they are sweet and very tasty. As an added benefit, the broad, egg-shaped leaves contain a natural hunger suppressant that can be released by chewing them. As it had been at least a day and probably more since I had last eaten, I greedily gobbled down several handfuls of the berries, the dark purple juice staining my face and fingers the colour of an old bruise. My hunger at least put on hold for the moment, I plucked a few leaves and started chewing. They were bitter and made my face pucker, but within moments I could feel the hunger pangs fading. Thus fortified, I began the next task I would need to perform: find some flint.
Without fire, I wasn?t going to be long for this world. I grew up in a forest very much like this one and I knew the nights could get very, very cold. Since the sun only very seldom reaches the forest floor, the world under the canopy of the great giants was often cool, even on the hottest summer days. Given how cool the air felt, though I?m sure my nakedness skewed the accuracy of my judgement somewhat, it felt like late summer or early fall. I might be okay for a while, but in another month or so, even with clothing, I would quickly die of exposure or illness. I might be able to start a fire by friction, but chances were that I wouldn?t find any wood dry enough for that. While the sticks and limbs I?d seen laying about the forest floor would be plenty dry enough to burn once I got a fire going, they would take a few days of drying next to a fire to make them dry enough to start a fire with. No, if I wanted a fire I was going to need a chunk of flint.
I started searching in the most logical place, the rocks around my cave. While all the walking around in bare feet was painful, it wasn?t too bad, especially since I was walking on what was essentially a thick carpet. The moss and needles covering the forest floor made the fact that I had no shoes or boots fairly easy to bear and I really only noticed when a stray needle or small stone poked into the arch of my foot. Of course, climbing around on the rocks that made up my cave was a different story. They were covered in moss for the most part, but that just made them slippery. The going was slow, as I had no desire to slip and break a bone or damage certain other external parts that had retreated from the world but were still quite vulnerable. It was beginning to get dark by the time I found myself sitting above the opening of my cave still without flint. With the light fading fast, there was no point in searching any more that day. I gave up and hopped down. It was barely a meter and a half to the ground, but when I hit the ground I felt something hurt.
At first, I was afraid I?d broken my foot. I felt around and couldn?t find any broken bones, at least, I didn?t think any were broken. I was hard to tell and I wasn?t really even sure what I was feeling for. That realisation disturbed me more than a little. I knew very little about myself. I knew that. What little I did know, I had drawn from the dreams I?d had, assuming them to have been created from my scattered memories. It wasn?t until that moment that I realised how very little I knew about who I was and who I had been. Were my dreams real or were they just fantasies created from my mind. How did I get to this forest? Where was I? Who was I? What was my name? Did I even have one? Question after question spun round in my mind, like a dragon chasing its tail. The more questions I realised I didn?t have the answers to, the more questions were spawned. It wasn?t until I noticed the warm dribble running down my foot and the bright red slick on my fingers that I finally snapped back to reality.
I stared at my hand for a moment. There was blood on it. My blood, to be sure. The same as was running down my foot from some sort of cut. The bright red superimposed over the dark stain left by the salal berries brought me back to myself and my present situation.
This was reality. This was now. This was my life.
In that moment, I realised perhaps the most important thing I?ve ever learned.
Survive first, ask questions later.
I pulled my foot up and looked at the wound. It didn?t look too bad, the cut was small and not very deep, but it was bleeding a lot. As I watched, the cut slowly drew together and closed, with no sign of a scar. I added it to the list of mysteries to be solved later. Since I didn?t seem to be injured anymore, I decided to see what had cut me in the first place. A few seconds of digging in the moss later and I came up with the culprit. A slow smile spread across my face as I pulled up a small chunk of flint. A little more digging and I found a few more small pieces and finally a chunk as long as my arm. Things were starting to look up after all.
I got up slowly, careful of the slight sting of lingering pain in my foot, rapidly fading though it was. I deposited my find near the spot I had marked out for a fire pit and set about gathering sticks and twigs. Thankfully, I didn?t have to range very far to get the wood I needed. There were plenty of fallen limbs near the mouth of my cave, at least enough to get me through that first night. Using my stone knife, I stripped some tinder from one of the drier branches, breaking up and drying a few clumps of moss to use as well. By the time I judged I had enough to get a fire going, it was almost full dark and I was starting to feel the chill of evening.
As I crouched there, huddled over a small pile of tinder and sticks, striking a chunk of flint against my knife, the intermittent light from the sparks threw harsh shadows across the face of the woman sitting across from me. Full lips curled in a gentle smile and amusement danced in her jade eyes. I?d done this before, sometime long past. The woman from my dreams had been there, but the woman I saw couldn?t have been her. The woman in my dreams was all soft lines and gentle curves. The woman sitting across from me was beautiful, of that there was no doubt. Any man would crawl across shards of broken glass for the chance to win her favour. Hers was a terrifying beauty, a weapon honed to a razor?s keenness. She had a face that could make men fall in love with her with nothing more than a glance, but there was no love there to return. She was cold and hard, an alabaster statue of perfection filled with nothing but hate and contempt.
To this day, I can?t say for certain if she was really there or not. I often tell myself that she wasn?t; that it was just my imagination playing tricks on me. It?s easier to believe she wasn?t there. To believe otherwise is more terrifying that I care to contemplate. What I do know for certain, is that every time I struck flint to knife, she was there and when I finally was able to call up a small flame, she was gone.
With a small fire to keep me warm and give me light, I was finally able to rest for a moment. Exhausted from the day?s labours, though I was, sleep was a long time coming that first night. Every time I closed my eyes, her face would swim back to my mind?s eye and I would jolt awake. I suppose it was a good thing, really. Every time I woke, I was able to feed some more sticks onto the fire and stay warm all night.
When morning finally came, I was a bit sleepy, but rested enough. I made my way down to the salal patch to eat some more berries and gather a couple of leaves to chew. My belly sated for now, I was about to start work on digging a latrine when a thought struck me. While I hadn?t seen much in the way of wildlife yesterday, that might not always be the case. It occurred to me that it might benefit me to mark my territory, to keep some of the larger predators away. So, lacking the musk gland which is usually used for the marking of territory, I resorted to what I did have on hand: plenty of water and the need to release it.
That?s not all I did that second day. I took the opportunity to also explore for some more food sources, since those salal berries would neither last forever, nor keep me healthy for very long. I found several other fruit-bearing bushes and vines, as well as a patch of wild tubers that would cook up nicely once I had made some cooking implements. I also located a tanoak tree that had the exceptional property of bearing a slender branch that was mostly straight and just a little shorter than I was tall. It took some work, but I was able to obtain the branch and began work stripping it and carving one end into a fair point. It was pretty basic as spears go, but something was better than nothing. Later, I planned on fire-hardening it, but for now, it made a pretty handy walking stick and potential weapon.
The day was fading as I returned to my cave, which was fine. Bolstered by all my finds of the day, I was feeling quite optimistic about my chances of survival. I gathered some more wood and got a fire going and checked my strips of cedar bark. They were plenty dry enough now and I set to stripping the outer bark away from the inner bark. I didn?t throw the outer bark away, however, it would come in handy for making a basket.
I worked by the light of the fire, steadfastly ignoring the woman sitting across the fire from me, watching me with warmly amused eyes, so at odds with the cold indifference portrayed by her face and form. Her flame-coloured curls shimmered and seemed to dance in the light from the fire. I refused to put the name to the face. This could never be the woman from my dreams. There was too much missing from her. Whatever the case, something deep within me, far inside the very core of my being recoiled at the very thought of giving this woman the name her face asked for.
So I sat there, my bare arse on the stone floor of my cave, working the soft kalakwahtie into usable strips and then pounded with a smooth stone until the fibres came to resemble fine cotton. She watched me the whole time I worked, the amusement in her eyes seeming to ask me, When? When will you name me? I was glad for the work to distract me. Had I had only my thoughts and her face, real or not, staring at me, I might have broken and given her the name she was asking for. I don?t know now, nor did I know then, why it was so important to me that I /not/ give her Elora?s name, but something, in that same place that so recoiled from the idea of naming her, told me that to do so would be to invite my own destruction. I strongly suspect that there were deeper instincts involved than are commonly acknowledged by modern thinking. Elf, dwarf, man and all the other Living Races like to think that we are more evolved than the animals of the forest and fields, yet, at that time, I was living proof of just how close we still are to the beasts. There is a singularly difficult lesson to be learned from my time in the wilds, one which many people never learn or, at the very least, refuse to acknowledge. We are all still animals and no matter the trappings of society and civilisation that we put on, we always will be. As animals, we have the instinct to survive, to live. I?ve found, many times over, just like any animal, the beast will seek to survive, by any means necessary, including the denial of delusional hallucinations. Especially that.
Much of the night had passed before I stopped working. I was tired, but satisfied by my work. I set aside the beginnings of a sleeveless tunic, adjusted the fit of my new breechclout and curled up by the fire to sleep. I awoke early the next morning to birdsong and rose to meet the day. I went out and gathered a quick breakfast and came back to my cave to continue working on my tunic, which ended up only taking me two more days to finish. I started keeping track of the days on the cave wall as my life quickly fell into a rhythm. The first couple weeks I spent almost exclusively making clothing, a couple of carryall baskets that I could sling over my shoulder with some twine I had fashioned from the outer bark of the cedar and a shallow stone bowl I used to cook with.
After I had these basics, I was able to concentrate more on gathering a stockpile of food and wood, which I would spend alternate days doing. I knew winter would be coming soon and I wanted to have as much food and wood stored up as I could to weather the cold months. I stopped seeing the woman every night after the first week, though she still showed up every few nights after that, though less and less often. The last time I saw her, roughly 28 days after I had woken up the first time, I couldn?t help but think she looked annoyed, angry and that it was directed at me. That was almost enough to break me. Try to imagine it, the face of an angel, angry at you and you know exactly why, then try not to set things right. I was, at last, able to keep from speaking her name, though I often can still taste the blood from biting my tongue near through to stop myself doing so. After that night, I never saw her again.
At that point, I was actually fairly content with my life. I knew what I had to do every day to survive and I did it. I enjoyed my labours and they were rewarding in their own way. I had even managed to catch some small game now and then, which was always a welcome addition to my diet. As it happens, I was growing more than simply contented with this life, but I was truly coming to enjoy it. The sheer simplicity of it all was life at it?s most basic. Food, shelter, clothing: the three fundamental needs of life, at least for most of the Living Races. I had them all and was always working on more. That was the most surprising thing, I think. The fact that no matter how much I did, there was always a little more I could do to ensure my continued survival. By the time I was nearing a month and a half of living out in these wilds; my cave was more a home that any I could remember, which made it especially annoying to have been chased out by that damned ruxus.
Still, chased out, I?d been. I still had the clothes on my back and one of my carryalls. I still had my first stone knife, now with a fire-blackened tanoak handle bound with strips of thin cedar twine and tanned squirrel hide. I still had that primitive spear, though now the point was shaped chunk of obsidian I?d found one day and had a short pair of antlers tied just beneath it, courtesy of a young buck I?d found killed in a deadfall. Unfortunately, the antlers and a few strips of hide were all there had been useable by the time I?d reached him. I had most of my flint. I never left that behind anymore, not since the night I had found myself well away from home when darkness had come. Of course, in the time I?d been out here, I had yet to devise or find a good way to carry water.
I wish I still had my second carryall, but I?d sacrificed it and the full load of berries, fruits and tubers it contained to delay the ruxus enough to give me time to escape. Oh, well. At least I didn?t have to start completely from scratch. Well, not that it would matter much if I didn?t find some viable water soon. The juice from the berries I?d been eating to sustain myself would keep me from dehydrating completely, at least until the imbalance of eating nothing but berries started taking its toll on me and I developed dysentery. That thought was depressing. I stared glumly at the berries in my hand for a moment and popped them into my mouth, chewing as I walked, heading for gods-knew-where, but I sure didn?t.
You'd think they'd share that sort of thing, sometimes.
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