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Rated: 18+ · Book · Sci-fi · #1127429
This is the second chapter. it is rough.
chapter 2

I decided to stay awake. It wasn’t a big decision, not really. I knew how to do it. Everyone knows how.
I woke. My mouth was dry, my tongue swollen and my eyes burned before I had even opened them. I could hear the sounds of the river running close by. I opened my eyes and the light was painful to me. I had felt this before and the sensation was vaguely reassuring. It had not yet occurred to me how much more so the light itself should have been. It was a morning like any other I had known. The sky was in its place. It was still cold but growing warm. I stood slowly and made my way somewhat roughly into the water. It felt nice. I moved out slowly and paused to splash my face and drink a little. It occurred to me then truly where I was. I was far from the village and had appointments to keep. I moved hurriedly into the water now and began to make my way across. I realized that again I had not checked the waters first for hunters but this time had no thoughts of my villagers. I simply did not want to be eaten. I swam as strongly as I could without flailing, controlling my breathing and trying not to cast my nervous eyes about.
As I made it to the far shore I came out quickly and looked around. It seemed clear. I looked around for a few moments for the boulder upon which I had set my clothing. I found my things and began dressing even as I made my way back the way I had come. I set a good pace but not so fast as to seem as if I had run.
Eventually I came to one of the main roads leading into the village. I was on the outskirts of our area, still too far to chance upon anyone coming about. I stalled.
I decided to make my way toward one of the shelters in the countryside so that upon returning I would not need to hide from the others or answer any questions. there was a run-down shelter several miles from where I was. it was a place that held bad memories which no one truly remembered anymore but the stigma remained and so no one was likely to have taken rest there. It was actually northeast of the village but I could make my way through the woods to the north and then return from there. If I could make my way.
*

I should have met mr. tabbot at the second of the early hours. I should have met him three days ago at the second of the early hours. I should have done a lot of things which I didn’t.
I just didn’t. id been in the small of the woods on the hill, living in an old box of a building. Id been sleeping. I knew that was what it was called now just as anyone knows a thing after they haven’t done it. Id been on a perpetual verge for 3 days, I was about an hours run from my village, I have a family, I have a job and I know that I am never going home. I am not much less naïve now then I had been only days ago but I know now both how ridiculous the thought that I had been dying was and, predictably, how it had been true and I had. I had nowhere to go because I was everywhere. I was spread all over my moments and all that seemed real to me was going back and soon enough I was.
I stood at the edge of my river, bit further perhaps from town then the last time id arrived and for the second time I began to scan the river for my flower. I piled my clothes not on the same rock but in the same fashion and learned that it only takes a second time for the smallest things to become routine, or that a procedure only needs two end points if that is a better phrasing. None of this had anything to do with how cold the water was or how quickly I found the plant or how careful I was of the mud at the bottom or even that I didn’t hear the tinny chorus of stones and pebbles. I also want to point out that I had brought the shaft of some farm tool I found at the shelter. it was as long as I was tall and i poked and prodded and searched and proved that there were no predators about beneath the surface and that I could learn.
I... there was no I anymore and I knew it even as I swam to shore, I got dressed, I gathered the plant carefully within my robes and I and my staff took off toward my new home. I simply carried the plant now and it carried darkness and I could blossom there. And such was our deal.
I ran hard toward home, harder then I had to in keeping that pace. I was becoming more primal. I saw better by day now and within weeks I began to hunt the hunters. I followed their tracks and began to learn their minds. They hunted they mated they watered. They fought amongst themselves for the rite to lead. They had owned the darkness. They ran un-checked throughout the forest. Certainly there were other predators but none I had seen and so none I concluded that lived in such numbers or together.
And as I always would have, I began to move among them. Not the hunters, my villagers. I moved in among them after their nights. I did not despise them their meager defenses. How childish. I simply moved among them, touching them, not touching them, sometimes both. They were like dolls. I could move them and place them. I could leave them that way.
I could arrange them into letters and leave them as a note to themselves. And in so realizing I knew immediately what i must write if i were going to. I would write, fare well. the idea to write dictated the need to leave because arriving in your mind is the first step to arriving in deed. Some roads may not only be started, they force the walker to finish and I didn’t want to follow that one. They were not dolls they were people and I wanted to leave while the same could be said for me. And more I was not actually sure that, fare well, was two words and not one and being dumb would not be a fitting goodbye.
And so I took my staff and my food and none of the plant and I exited my village. I took a cub as well, one of the hunter pups I had found weeks earlier. I called him Lonely because it was a terrible name and there was no one to be critical where we could go.
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