“Principium flaccidus.”

Knock, knock. My turn? Hello? Anyone there? I’ll take the lead then. Nobody wants to fight me for it? No? Okay. What’s the resistance planted on the end of this rope? The character we introduced, that’s right. Our subject, ah, we can’t keep calling him that, our path will be easier if I give him a name. Anyone want to stop me? Nothing. Now, a moniker, hmm, what to anoint him? I think it’s going to be, something like, something akin to, I’m going to name him Cain. What?

We, previously, received a swipe of Cain’s dissatisfactions, a restrictive environment, affections for pins without any teeth, and a pyramid of effect that was designed with only stuff in mind. We also received his lambing days, effortless existence amidst stories with no rhyme and games with no reason. Great, now, where, exactly, were we? On a hill top looking down on creation. Cain had placed his stone upon a type of cairn, a pile of testament to the spectacle of constant sacrifice. Cain didn’t appreciate it that way though. To Cain it was a communal act of spite that absorbed his exertions and gave nothing back. Cain had bore witness to something rare, we might have seen perspective, Cain saw reality. We’re probably correct and true, we always are, but a perspective doesn’t set a broken bone, a perspective can’t force flame to shoot out your eyes, your mouth, your fingers. Cain walked down that hill burning bright, but at the bottom he met the horrors of a particularised World. Brains buzzing with ants, minds giving way to the must that is. Cain sheltered his flagrated appendages from this World despite and not, like we might, because. Now he could recognise that he was drowning in it, that we are drowning in it, the whole that can’t help other than appear as a choice.

Walking down from the hill something other than the stone that ripped apart his shoulders weighed in Cain’s arms. He did a strange dance below, he walked to the settlement and then walked in the opposite direction, he did this several times. The settlement was everything that he said it was. A Sun that comes out the other way it went in. A leaf that goes from green to red and then to brown before going back to green again. He stuck to this loop until it broke upon a compromise, he would travel to the noticer’s hut. The noticer, yes, what will his name be? Troublesome, isn’t he? A bit of a bother on top of a stick. Loves to poke his nose in and ruin our flow. Worshipper of the hidden mark, creator of the outside life, wearer of a hat that’s supposed to burn down but always manages to remain soaking wet. Absolutely contemptible. Pitiful. Such a privileged little floater. Let’s call him, and by extension all of them, Arawn.

Arawn kept a handful of trees around his hut, when I say he kept them I mean he kept them. He grew them to his pleasing. On a sunny day those trees created a shade and manicured blades of light. Arawn was relaxing outside and smoking on a wooden pipe. Smoke, white in the shade, blue on the blade. In the quiet summer air it eddied, spirals forming spirals, twisting galaxies of cloth appearing to connect then drifting apart. Arawn didn’t stir when Cain approached, he was gazing off into the distance distracted by something completely else. Arawn didn’t greet Cain. Arawn didn’t even offer a polite question regarding what had happened to Cain up on Hill. Cain leaned over Arawn forcing him into a shadow that Arawn had not created. Arawn took a puff, faced Cain, and blew it off into Cain’s face, “You’re a man now.” It was true, Cain had placed the stone on top of Hill, he had completed the ritual, he confirmed this to Arawn, “A man is able to choose their own path.” Men, after completing the ritual, would usually knuckle down and get on with finding their position in the settlement. Forcing the stone up and placing it down meant positioning yourself that way. Opening your eyes and closing in on the vision meant understanding your position that way. Life was precious. Victory came from making something of yourself. Get a partner, maybe two, make babies, be content, celebrate the precarity you yourself have witnessed. Cain had set down a different stone, seen a different view. He declared this to Arawn and forced him to sit up in his seat. Never had he witnessed a boy go up and a boy come down. He was a little bit offended, but, also, part of him was impressed with the shrimp testicled wimp that had faced down the four trials and met estrangement, “Responsibility is not something to skip around.” Arawn shook his head and sat back, he took a puff and pushed Cain out of his light without using any force. Right on the spot, where the moment meets its shadow, Cain made up what he was going to do and let it be known to Arawn. His plan, which he’d always definitely had, was to become a self-sufficient individual, reliant all by itself. Not a subject. Not a support. Not a piece of talus bone. Cain paused for a bit as he studied Arawn’s response, but Arawn just carried on smoking and sitting back on his seat. Cain continued, he explained that he was taking inspiration from the ancient ones. The ones that everyone round him had forgot but that time had not. The ancient ones that lived in the forest and by the forest alone. They were heroes, eating what the forest provided, clothing themselves in wild things. They were the antithesis of what people had become. Corrupt, stagnant, status obsessed. Cain was going to release himself from that. Cain denounced his responsibility to the settlement right there, right to Arawn’s laid back demeanour.

Arawn had a general notion on how to proceed. Arawn knew, off heart, the rituals for a person ready to make a go of it, but a denouncement? Eh, if he didn’t have a specific ritual for it nobody had one. And, even though Cain was now staring at him like a bug-eyed maniac, he still deserved some succour. Extra comfortable in his seat, Arawn procrastinated with his pipe as he thought something up. Time past, it does that, happenstance and profundity tapped across Arawn’s soul. Arawn shot his arm out, fingers clasped and thumb pointing out and up. Arawn instructed Cain to wrap his right hand around his thumb. Cain did that. Cain had to repeat these words exactly, “I will go like faith.” Cain repeated in the usual rote manner of ritual, “I will go like faith.” Arawn paused, thinking up the next line, then it came, “I will not consume what is not provided me.” Cain repeated, “I will only eat the food provided me.” That wasn’t what Arawn had said. Arawn made Cain repeat what had originally been said precisely. Cain tugged a little at Arawn’s thumb as he repeated it, “I will not consume what is not provided me.” Arawn came up with the third and final oath as Cain was repeating the previous one, “I will not trespass where I am not wanted however hunger or lust tempts me.” Cain repeated that, “I will not trespass where I am not wanted however hunger or lust tempts me.” Phew, done. Arawn instructed Cain to let go of his thumb. Cain’s palm was sweaty, and so, now, was Arawn’s thumb.

Arawn went into his hut and, immediately, Cain heard him break into laughter. Quite a stretch past before Arawn stopped laughing and stepped out his hut to stare at where Cain was standing. Arawn then went back inside and the laughing continued but this time deeper inside of his hut. Arawn came back with a bundle of arrows. Arawn, holding his bundle, suggested to Cain a third way, between the wild and the settlement. Cain could study under him and become a noticer. “Nobody actually calls you that.” Arawn knew that’s what they called him. Cain pretended to think about it, he took his time even though he knew what his answer would be, “I don’t- I mean it works for you. Going with the flow and that. But, erm, it’s like, some people got chains and weights attached to them, inside of them or whatever. There are things that they are destined to do, like, unhitch themselves? That might seem like an excuse, but that’s up to you. I just feel like, personally, that I wouldn’t be able to. I’d feel like I’d always have the need to swim inside of me. As much as I admire what you do, of course, I- I can’t, I don’t- I don’t know, I can’t get the hang of dealing with all the things you must deal with. You have to be about people and then not about them. The seed of so many things and then so far away from the fruits. It seems strange to me, u- unnatural.” Arawn explained to Cain that the only thing he needed to say was, “No, thank you, I don’t want to.” He had proved himself a man, he had to get used to succinctly putting his foot down. He didn’t need to explain why he did things. “It’s where things like this come in handy.” Arawn threw the bundle of arrows at Cain’s feet. Arawn told Cain that the arrows were a gift. Cain could not have Arawn’s bow to go with it, because, Arawn explained, “I need that.” But if Cain wanted to get hold of a bow then it would be as simple as picking one up at the settlement and Arawn advised Cain to use his, new found, full-blooded manhood to get exactly what he wanted there. Cain tried to embrace Arawn, but Arawn blocked him off, “You do not need to embrace me, embrace the gift.” Cain picked up the bundle of arrows like a baby. Arawn put his arm around Cain and escorted him to one of his trees. He told Cain to look inside a large hole in the tree for something that, “Hopefully the crows haven’t already pilfered.” Cain rummaged in the hole for a while and the stuff he pulled out made the blacks of his eyes expand beyond the brown and into the white. “I got this from a guy that was dying, well he’s dead now, anyway, easy come easy flow. You can do what you want with it. You can throw them into the oceans as far as I care. You can become a wealthy man about the settlement if that pleases you. But, if you choose to go wild, then I ask that you consider this, not as a gift, but as a debt. On that proviso you will pay me back by doing exactly as I tell you.” Cain held them in his open palm staring at them through open space amazed about how close he was to such a commodity. “Why?” Cain spluttered, “No,” Arawn replied, “No, you listen.” Cain couldn’t listen. Cain closed his fist and thrust it at Arawn. Cain could not accept it, it poisoned his quest before it had even been born. “You’re testing me? I take this and I prove that I need the settlement.” Arawn answered his question, “A debt is never a test. A debt is an obligation.” Arawn, with the same strength as he had previously pushed Cain out of his light, pushed Cain’s closed fist back towards Cain. “Listen, dear, to what it is your obligation is. I will not repeat myself or have you come back here asking questions.” Arawn explained to Cain what he had to do to pay him back and named a specific manager for Cain to liaise with. After the usual courteous back and forth Cain went on his way. “Yes, yes, yes, on ‘his’ way.”

Cain had never seen the oceans, not up close. It certainly would have been a worthy candidate for a journey. But what would he even do there? He wouldn’t want to eat the things that lived in the oceans. Revolting. Hurling Arawn’s bribe into it though? Turning the debt into ashes? A very fitting start to a life of self-sufficiency. Carefree, violent, and mocking. Indignant rebellion would have been the perfect and just thing to do. That’s not what he did though. He could have lived in relative ease and comfort as a wealthy member of the settlement. A perfect thing to do and quite reasonable too. It certainly would have done service to his sensibilities. But, ay, that would not have done service to his eventual disintegration, it wouldn’t give it the sincerity it deserved. An honest outlook needs humble living, humble living needs a harmonious nature. Cain went back to the settlement to make good on the third way that Arawn had obligated him with. Not the being a noticer third way, no, Cain had gotten bits messed up and confused along the way. In a way, a funny way, it was a path beyond rebellion and reason, and it’s always better to fall into somebody else’s trap than your own. So he did it. He did what Arawn told him. Away he went to the settlement in search of a manager we call Mayahuel.

It is said that the things we care about most are attached to us by tightly wrapped plant fibres. It is, promise. Those settlement folks had questions for Cain when he arrived back. He’d been gone a long time and he hadn’t collected any of the stuff that he was sent out to collect. Cain ignored them, like Arawn’s man, and went straight for Mayahuel. “No time like now.” He told them as he barged through. Mayahuel was keeping her eye on a group of labourers when Cain tracked her down. Cain had to tell her how the noticer had name dropped her specifically so to get her to pay attention to what he was saying. Cain told her the truth, not the whole of it, that wouldn’t have served his purpose. He recounted to her a general sense of the ritual he had undergone, some part of what the noticer had said, and mentioned how impressive he was now he had seen the view on top of Hill. The way he stood, close to her and with an elevated fist, made Mayahuel uneasy. Her caution dissipated though when Cain opened up his hand. Four pieces of amber scraped sparks towards her. One, Cain let Mayahuel know, “Was for her if she helps him get what he wants.” What did he want? “That wasn’t important right now.” Mayahuel’s left brow raised and she left one of her trusted resters to oversee labour in her absence as she went off with Cain under her wing saying, “If this is what the noticer wants?”. It was. As they strolled together through the settlement Mayahuel suggested, off hand, in her way, that perhaps Cain would do well to hand over the amber to her for safe keeping. Cain dangled his fist above her open palm for a moment but then withdrew it. Cain needed things from her first, Mayahuel nodded her head and said, “No worries. So,” She repeated her question, “What did Cain want?” Cain pondered this question for far too long. He arrived at the simplest answer, he had this bundle of arrows with him and he needed a bow to go with them. Mayahuel nodded even more emphatically than before, “Yes, we can do that. I can even get you a quiver to put all your arrows in, save you lugging them around. How about that?” The pair agreed. They ceased strolling and walked with purpose.

The four pieces of amber were so smooth to the touch, they didn’t need their visual sensation to project beauty. The pair talked as they walked. It was a surreal experience for Cain, being treated like he mattered. He didn’t deserve it, of course. All he’d done was flash some dead man’s jewels that a squirrel hadn’t managed to steal. All he’d done was force a stone up a hill and placed it down on a bunch of other stones. All he’d done was cross his arms at the prospect of growing up. Mayahuel did most of the talking and, even though they walked with purpose now, she still took her time with her open armed gestures and sideways glances taking up most of her energy. She talked about how set in their ways the deciders were, she said it was a shame. She said that the noticer was about the only voice that could get them to budge on anything. Cain mentioned in passing how odd it was that the noticer had mentioned her so specifically, “Oh yeah, I talk to him sometimes. I talk to him about, you know, private things going on in my life.” It was so private that Mayahuel began to divulge it with Cain. She was in a relationship with some bloke that treated her like, “A fly trapped on a spider’s web.” Apparently she’d put too much time into the settlement and into this relationship to walk away from it all. She began breaching the topic of her sex life and then, thankfully, they reached their destination before she could get into too much detail. “Here we are.”

Cain was instructed to wait by the entrance while Mayahuel conversed with one of the makers inside their hut. These makers, isn’t it? Must be nice. They get their own area to work and, plus that, they can sleep there as well, by themselves if they please. Better than being shoved into barracks with everyone and their mother that’s for sure. Cain stood there waiting until the man that mattered emerged from him and forced Cain inside uninvited. The maker, we’ll call him Jim, and Mayahuel’s conversation faded to dust as Cain entered. Jim looked at Cain confused, Mayahuel looked at him as if he’d grown a second head. Maybe he had grown a second head? Cain checked, nope, just one. Cain addressed Jim, who was sitting with his hands submerged in something wet, direct, “I want to get one of those,” Cain flung his index finger at a bow, “And I already got plenty of arrows so don’t you worry about that.” Jim didn’t move or reply to Cain, he wasn’t impressed in the slightest by Cain’s new found aura of liberation. “But, like, I guess I’ll need to know also how to make my own arrows? For some point in the future. Could you do that for me?” Mayahuel was still pissed, but Jim warmed up a little with Cain’s question. Jim got up off his bum and explained to him that Cain would need to talk to a whole other maker if he wanted to learn about arrows. “A whole other?” Jim made the strings for bows and that was it. “Okay then, what do I do if I break my bow?” Jim wiped his hands on his thighs and told Cain to come to him if he breaks it. “What if I can’t come to you?” If Cain couldn’t get to him his advice was simply to make sure that he never broke it in the first place. Cain scratched at his scalp and nodded tiny lost nods, then he asked who he needed to see about making arrows. “There’s not one maker you need if you want to make arrows?” It turned out there were at least three makers that Cain had to get in contact with if he wanted to know how to make a singular arrow. “Three? Which is the most important? Which one finishes them off?” Jim explained that it was the fletcher that finished them off, but, well, “Explaining which one’s most important would be like telling you which sunbeam made a summer’s day.” Jim roughly explained what a fletcher does. The fletcher adds the bits at the end of an arrow. Jim showed which bit by holding up one of Cain’s arrows as an example. “Oh yeah.” Cain knew that. Cain went to grab Mayahuel round the shoulders at this point but she didn’t let him. “Let’s go to this arrow guy then.” Mayahuel concluded affairs with Jim saying, “Like I explained earlier,” And gave Cain a cold stare. She picked up one of the finished bows from a shelf. “There you go.” She shoved it into Cain’s chest. They went off to see the fletcher maker, sorry, the arrow guy.

Gary, his name is now Gary, their name is always Gary. Gary was relaxing in his hut. His very own hut, lucky buggers. “See,” That’s the way it always starts, “I don’t really make them, it’s more that I attach them.” Cain wanted to know how he did it. “You need someone who’s going to shoot down a bird for you to begin with.” Cain told him to skip that part. “Right,” Gary looked at Mayahuel and they shared a conspiratorial glance, “You take the feathers and then, in these little holes you make here, you attach them and you have to cut them and shape them. This helps the arrow, yeah, attach itself to the air better and fly straight. You know?” Cain wondered, out loud, whether this part of the arrow was absolutely essential. To him it didn’t seem to really matter that much, bit ornamental perhaps. “Mate, look, if you want an arrow to go where you shoot it then you’re going to need plenty of these attached to it. You know?” Mayahuel and Cain exited Gary’s hut on that bitter note. Gary’s profession besmirched and Cain’s ignorance flapping in the wind. One productive thing did come out of their exchange though. Mayahuel managed to finagle a quiver for Cain. As they left together he shoved his bundle of arrows in it and put it over his left shoulder. The two of them continued to talk outside of the fletcher’s hut. Mayahuel wanted to know about the arrows Cain had with him, “I’m guessing you got them from the noticer?” Cain had got them from Arawn. “What, exactly, happened with you and the noticer?” Cain told her, this time in detail, the ritual he’d gone through, holding out his thumb as he spoke. “Is that it?” Cain gazed off into the distance and mumbled something, “You have got what you wanted, can I have the amber?” One of them was for her, he reminded her of that, and then stammered a bit as he gave her the information of the more difficult part of, not what he wanted, what the noticer had obligated him to obtain. Cain had taken an oath, he emphasised that as well. When Cain told Mayahuel the rest of what he was instructed to obtain, she sputtered out a, “What?” And cranked her head sideways. “Like the noticer said that to you precisely?” He had said that to some degree. “Exactly those words though, right?” Exactly, yes. Mayahuel played with the rim of her ear and asked to see the pieces of amber again. Cain produced them and she gazed into them. “Okay, listen, are you listening? It’s possible that I can get you directly in front of some deciders, I think it’s possible at least. If that’s what you want me to do?” Cain interrupted her at this point and said that it was what the noticer wanted. “Yes, but you also want that?” Cain affirmed that he did want that, “Okay, but listen, this is highly unorthodox. If you have to go down this path then there’s no going back. You’ll forever be marked out as the guy that did this thing you’re doing.” Cain agreed, it was very unusual, but it was still what he wanted. “Wait here for me, I’ll be back.” She went. She came back. She ushered Cain to the tree.

It was that tree, he went on about it before, remember? Good, because I don’t. The one with the human soul or whatever it was he went on about. At the tree he didn’t meet a lone decider, no, he met three of them. Three? There they were, on one side the three with the tree, and facing them was Mayahuel and Cain. They began in silence. Each decider took their turn to bog at Cain and finger their long grey beards that merged into their long grey hair. In contrast stood Cain with his labourer’s shaved head and nothing to play with on his chin in retaliation. Silence broke to an unintelligible muttering between the deciders, and, maybe, the tree too. They huddled around the tree nevertheless. Half way into their closed talks Cain noticed his legs aching from standing in that same position for too long, and it was getting dark before they even spoke a word to him, “Can you confirm, under oath, that the position of noticer instructed you to perform such tasks as pertaining to the ones that you have said claimed?” Cain’s voice had gotten croaky from lack of use but he did confirm. “Can you now exhibit said claimed offerings?” Cain opened his hand and showed off the four bits of amber, he was going to tell them that it wasn’t an offering, it was a debt, but he stopped himself short. “Please deposit the aforementioned to your appointed attendee.” Cain handed them off to Mayahuel and she went up to the four of them and gave every last bit of it to the deciders. Cain was mortified, he opened his mouth and let out a shred of noise but was sharply told to hush by his attendee. The three deciders handed the four pieces of amber between themselves and then one of them presented it to the tree. When that was done one piece of amber was handed to Mayahuel and she walked backwards, towards Cain, as she bowed her head. When she got back in position Cain had to walk forward, place his hands on the tree’s bark, and close his eyes for a period of time. After that he walked back to his original position facing the tree but not bowing. It still wasn’t over though, the deciders started muttering between themselves again as Cain and Mayahuel stood and waited. Then it came, “It has been decided.” At this point Mayahuel used her right arm in a sweeping pattern to confirm that the ceremony had culminated and that the two of them needed to leave together. On their final walk Cain saw Mayahuel actually smile. She had been converted by Cain’s wealth it would seem. The unconventional manner of events weren’t important, it was sorted now. She had become a woman able to make a stake, and he was a man able to forge his identity. Mayahuel took Cain to the animal pens, when they arrived she told him, “Now or never.” She handed him a rope and let him know that he was on his own now, it was full on dark when she left. Cain slipped through the pen gate and roped up the youngest calf he could find. He took it out with him and tied it up outside the hut where he would spend his last night in the settlement.

Sleep is the closest thing to orgasm that isn’t orgasm. A person can go for a mile long sleep and never achieve it, a person can take a few steps and get their brain fibres mulched into a tight chord. Cain slept that night with a calf tied up outside. Everyone was annoyed with him when it woke them up, Cain was annoyed at him too. He did get some sleep, even enough to where he saw a dream. The community circling the human soul tree and rubbing on it until it shone like amber. He woke unbound, none of his plans had changed with sleep. By the first slight hint of natural light Cain got up and went out. He packed as he usually would with the exception of tying a rope around his waist, connected to the calf’s neck, and having a quiver of arrows and a bow at his side. No ceremony saw him off. No dignitary shook his hand. His journey began in the direction he had gone farthest previously. Against the Sun, north. He walked until he found a lake, smaller than previous and not as boggy. He rested there and replaced his water stocks, letting the calf have a proper gulp by his side. This was it, wasn’t it? Yep. If he walked enough it would bring him there. It didn’t matter what he did he’d find it. The forest was in every direction that the clearance wasn’t. His language mirrored this, the word clearance was literally the negative form of the word for forest. Like non-forest, but not as stupid sounding. It was one of those words you used and didn’t really recognise what it meant until you grappled with it. He left that lake in every direction plus one. The calf was not an excellent traveller, it had to stop a lot, it got tired very quickly. When Cain felt the lead around his waist get too heavy he’d stop and let the calf catch its breath. He didn’t waste this down time though. He used it to prepare his shooting technique. First he’d practise without even picking up the bow. He’d hold his left hand forwards and pull a closed right hand back to his ear. He did this until he was confident enough to pick up his real bow. The bow was unloaded as he drew it back bit by bit, mindful that if he broke anything he had no way to fix it. As he continued to draw his mind travelled to the forest and his quest. He was the one, the one that would break the curse. What curse? The curse that had shrouded human life in untold misery and despair for too long. He would be the first, but then, oh then, his reputation would grow and others would follow. Following them would be the entire World awoken. It was a matter of a stone rolling down a hill. He would sire the return of the ancient ways and repair the human soul. His bravery, his self-sufficiency, would be the guiding light for a whole generation. A generation sick of settlements, sick of strict order and status, sick of obedience to stuff. People would have everything they need in pure stasis. A stasis that extended from the depths of humanity out into everything that surrounded us. Cain stood there, with a calf tied to his waist, working out his pumping arm, dreaming up his triumph, up to the point where his wrist ached too much. He sat down with the calf until it was ready to walk again. Cain grabbed something to eat before moving, he covered the calf’s eyes as he ate the dried remains of its fellows.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Days ended and began in a symmetrical pattern. Nights stretched with the cavernous breath of forever. One day, oh, glorious day, the symmetry melted and Cain saw it. He told you. He told you it was just a matter of time. It came at a distance to begin, then, as it built its presence, it arrived. An extensive magnitude. An edge to the deep. Cain set up a camp within visual contact of the forest that was securely obscured from it. He stayed there entrenched. He would have to breach the forest soon, but not yet. He kept the fear he had of that breach hidden from himself whilst constantly abiding by the actions that the fear commanded of him. His bow training happened in full sight of the edge. If the calf strayed towards the edge then he’d force it back into a more defensible position. A swarm of marauders could have burst out the clearance and the first thing Cain would have known of them would have been his skull collapsing to one of their axes, his eyes, in their last dying light, still hooked on that edge. He was a dog and the forest was his master. But this reverence did break, and it broke on a promise. Early one day, in the mist, Cain spotted creatures protruding into the clearance. At this sight he grabbed his bow and nestled an arrow between the two fingers that grasped the string. This was the first time he’d actually loaded his bow, the arrow slid into his fingers as if it’d always been there. He got as close as he had ever been to the edge and he saw just how dark it looked like inside of the forest. He crept towards them, in a squatted stance, until one of the deer cranked its head up and pointed its eyes, and its heavy beating heart, towards Cain’s position. He took one insignificant speck of a step more and watched as the whole group of them bolted for the trees leaving him alone in the early morning fog. The few he saw run were the vanguard of a much larger squadron that he only heard. Cain shuffled back to his camp and grabbed everything as fast as he could. The major point of contention was getting the rope around his waist with his fingers wet from dew. It slipped and would not tie, but eventually even that succumbed to his will and it fastened round his waist. Time had emerged to become an ancient one.

The forest air was different. Damp, clammy, fragrant. The ground spongy. The paths penetrating inwards were thick with bramble bushes and nettles. A few paces could be like negotiating a cliff face. The gloom wasn’t as apparent as it had been from the outside, though the Sun didn’t shine it glimmered in the distance. This new world beckoned him to become one with it, but he wasn’t too sure. Cautious, Cain made certain to keep his head as low as the nearest patch of brambles and his focus attached to the direction of the clearance. He cleared a path with his axe and settled down near a small pond. He tied the calf to a tree and then climbed up the next nearest tree over. The same trees that blocked his view below blocked it above. Nothing to see, what little distance he could make out was just as vague and repetitive as at the base. Cain clambered back down and, after taking a precautionary review of his camp site, retrod his steps back to the edge making sure to get as clean an understanding of the terrain as he was able. He reached the edge sooner than he had left it. He found that he’d only really dipped his toe into the forest. The following days were spent listening out, looking for traces of deer, and scratching marks into the trees to act as way signs. He moved his camp slightly farther from the pond because of his first night being flooded by flying insects, but that was about it. Once those initial days had worked themselves out he felt more secure in his foothold. He got to thinking about how this was now a real life that belonged to him. A soft embrace witnessed fully by nothing but the souls of the trees.

With initial gains secured Cain’s tactical insertion came into full effect as the lure of the earliest beginnings of the world had grasped him by his cheeks. His first proper exposure saw him get caught out by an insurgency of nettles that carved out a rash on his thigh that stretched from his knee up to near where his balls were situated. A circular patch of mushrooms were the highlight of the next day. Cain stayed well clear of them lot and marked it off by putting an ‘X’ on the trees that surrounded it. Each of these days had begun and ended untying the calf so it could drink and feed and then tying it back up again. But, on the day after the patch of mushrooms, he began by untying the calf and leaving it like that. He tested the rope to see if he could reuse it as a replacement string, but it was not possible. The rope was made from plants, the bow string was made from something else, probably some part of an animal. The rope didn’t snap back in the same way the bow string did, it flopped too much when it was pinged. Cain took the rope with him to dump nearby his camp site whilst a memory of Arawn telling Cain to release the calf into the wild bobbed to the surface of Cain’s mind. Was that what Arawn had actually said? It’s not important. Having a calf around him when he was becoming an ancient one? That can’t have been what Arawn meant by his orders. That wouldn’t have made sense. Cain paused before releasing the rope to the ground and then let it go anyway. Back at the camp the calf refused to stumble out into Cain’s memory. It stayed put around the embers of the fire at the camp site. It would get the message soon enough, Arawn’s message that is. That day Cain went towards the clearance, turned around, and went back through his camp in a, straightish, path that took him his deepest into the interior he had ever known. He hacked his way through many cliff faces until a particular dense patch had him intensely concentrating on the floor in front of him. Once he had finished hacking he took a moment to look up and discovered that he had arrived. He had found the exact phrase of nature he had been searching for. The clearing. See deer weren’t that different from cows, deer run where cows stay, but deer and cows will actually eat very similar things. Where would a cow want to be? They’d want to be where the trees part and all of the plant life that trees cannot permit flourish. Grasses, small flowers, and broadleaf bushes. Cain took a punt that this is where deer would want to be too. Cain built it straddling the clearing, the perfect hide. Perfect because it was the first he had ever made on his own. Cain, for everything else, constructed a potent hide. Entrance dug into the ground, a skeleton of naturally arching branches, seamless camouflage consisting of brambles and moss, and, where his eyes would be when he sat on a log, a slit with topographically astute sight lines that spanned the entire clearing. In his previous works he had always to sacrifice some seeing for not being seen, but in this work, his magnum opus, there was no sacrifice. The spectacle raining down, sometimes literally, captured Cain’s mind without catching him. It was too cold during the night for Cain to live in it permanently, but when frigidity took its call Cain sat there behind his curtain. His days found their groove. Life spent with the hide. Night spent with the camp, bringing back to light the same burnt out embers, and pondering the calf, free to go but hanging around even after Cain had flapped his hands at it. This was Arawn’s wish though. No getting round it. Cain had taken an oath, several oaths in fact.

Hide life meant observing animals play. Butterflies flittered in the sunlight and created streams of milk in their wake, not pertaining to their insect nature. The worms, they were millipedes mostly but in Cain’s language they were worms, crawled up and around Cain’s ankles sporadically. Those critters definitely pertained. Cain would swat them off with no specific harm in mind, but if they happened to die what person would mourn them? To the worms his legs were just another branch to tap their life on to, whether he had a pulse or not mattered little to them. Between those two were the buzzing ones. Cain would hear them land on or near the hide. Their buzzing was like rain, initially noted until the initiation ended and turned their sound to just another noise. Bird song, the old lady would have loved it were it not for the worms, rang out more prominently but faded to the scenery just the same. He even caught sight of a few birds. They’d flash by, usually in sync with the canopy, but sometimes they’d swoop down low. Cain saw a magpie do this, a black and white animal on the branch, but, flying by in the light, it displayed a radiant blue and green. As Cain spied at the majesty of animality he swung on two conflicting feelings. Hope and failure blended. It’s over in that it’s happening. It’s happening because it’s over.

It did happen. Cain was right, they’re like cows. Everything’s like cows. His eyes burst through his mouth when he saw them. Red deer. His vision planted itself on top of them as he scrambled to find his bow, but, wouldn’t you know, this was the day he left it behind. He thought about what to do, there was no way around it, his arms weren’t strong enough yet, he’d have to go back and fetch his bow at the camp. Cain crawled. On his belly he crawled out the hide and then across the open forest floor. A certain distance allowed him to get off his belly and on to his fours, then, far enough away, he got straight up and pegged it. He tripped and stumbled a few times on his way back to camp, scratching his hand and knee in the rush, but he barely registered the pain. Back at camp he made a line for the bow ignoring everything else. The return trip was the same but in reverse. Fast, crawl, and then slither. Luckily, when he got back to the clearing, they were still there. Cain placed his hand on a piece of bare rock and thanked it for keeping the deer steady. Cain snaked into the clearing until he found a half fallen tree. There he crouched and loaded his bow. Cain cut his breath, closed his movement, and locked his feet. The rest of existence evaporated. His eyes centred on to the one red deer that had wandered closest to his intrusion into the clearing. It was a hind grazing isolated slightly from two other females and, from earlier experience, Cain surmised, behind them, would be more hidden in the forest. Okay, so, this was great and all but Cain kind of wanted to take down a stag. Nothing personal against stags, Cain just had these dreams that centred around him wearing a crown made from their antlers. A hind was a good start though. Skin to clothe, flesh to feed, it was still workable. As he drew his bow slightly more he looked at his scratched up hand and felt it hurt. Pain made drawing the bow back stiff, that wasn’t going to get in his way now though, he raised his bow ready to let loose when he knocked the tree stump, ever so lightly, with the end of the bow making the faintest of sounds upon it. He stayed crouched, static as he had ever been, deleted his breath, and felt the search for his obtrusion begin. A spit of time went by that lasted a shower until, above them in the trees, a bird went off, “Akou, Akou.” Like that. It put the deer at ease, they continued to graze, and Cain reinstalled his breath and re-raised his loaded bow. Slow, careful, together with the Universe. Cain drew an ultimate breath and then peaked out slightly from behind the stump. He waited for the wind to whip up a spiral of noise and then he pointed his whole being at the nearest hind. Cain pulled the string back a little bit extra until it reached the climax of his strength. He felt a wave of control press on his chest. He was ancient, self-sufficient, a pure circle of his being and nature’s order that could never be broken. He got a look. His heart beat with the heart of the hind. His teeth chewed on the same grass. His hair bent with the same wind. Cain had to. This was reason and life. He emptied his life, no affection, he closed his eyes, no going back, he didn’t notice his scratched up hand going loose on the string and, when Cain finally let out his l’expression de la volonté générale, the arrow spat out a wobble. It clipped the backside of the hind and scratched it up no worse than his own knee. It retreated to cover, they all did. Cain stayed crouched. It was over.

Cain rocked back on his heels and collapsed on to the green. A table had been set before him and he’d botched it, a failure that would follow him for all of his days. He dwelled on his mistakes, in a tomb that had been fashioned for him by the plants of this world. A worm, that wasn’t a worm, crawled across his injured hand and restored him to a standing position. Cain sighed. He took one last look at the clearing and walked back to his interior camp, his head wrapped tight in the scarf of failure. He thought about the time he had spent watching the clearing. Wasted. He thought about how lucky he was to find that clearing. Wasted. How lucky he was that any deer came along at all. Wasted. He thought about how kind the settlement had been to give him the opportunity to follow his dream. All up in smoke. Cain, as he walked, heard a rustle come from one of the bushes, he didn’t even care to investigate it, too demoralised, but it caught his attention any way. He felt something watch him as he went on farther and looked behind him. Standing on his right path was a fox who ran off before he could even take a picture. Nothing else happened, it did lift his spirits though. This whole thing was his first try. There were a lot more deer out there. It did not mean he was going to starve or freeze. He needed some practise, that was all. At the very least he knew to keep his eyes open next time. He needed to embrace the facts of life. Things die. They do. Maybe he needed to be more desperate in order to directly take a life. That was it, the eyes open thing of course, but also, he needed to be absolutely starving for it. What’s important, when you think about it, is that he tried and he learnt. The forest is a big one. It is. Wide open. It can accept failure. When he did succeed it would be glorious. His cup would run, he would bathe in the shadow of death. And, oh no, it’s not going to be some ratty old hind that pops its head out next time, let me tell you, it’s going to be a big bulging glistening buck. Huge engorged antlers writhing with trophy magic. That’s the one.

Night time cools the air but fires the mind. Cain needed sleep, his brain, we know well, needed to compile the new information he had been presented with. Cain found it difficult to sleep, he couldn’t stop ruminating. Chewing on his lost vision. Swallowing clumps of error. Digesting empty hands. The calf was still there of course. Kneeling down and sleeping close to the black charred remains of the fire pit. Who is this thing? What is it familiar to? Why has Cain brought it this far? Maybe the first thing he needed to do was kill the calf. Practise killing. It’s the way of life. But, oh, he gave his word. He imagined Arawn. He imagined how unsurprised the noticer would have been with what had occurred that day. Mayahuel, the deciders, probably the tree too, if they were at his interior camp they’d ask him what happened and then they would have laughed at him and told him so. That’s when he heard them. His first time ever hearing them. Howling.

Howling came from deep inside the trees. A syncretic chorus that made Cain want to swallow his own teeth. Mentally he had prepared himself for this, the stories people recounted always had wolves tucked away in them somewhere. But the storytellers didn’t do the sound justice. It was like when they would clap to represent thunder. When a person howls in a story the children would laugh. This was not funny. Cain thought about running, but the wolves were hunters like him, victims of the same rule set. He imagined they were like being next to a raging river to ease his mind. The water looks ferocious but it’s following a different path to where he was standing. The wolves were not tracking people they were tracking deer and however much this startled him it couldn’t change his approach. This was priced in. Inevitable.

Cain did manage to get a little sleep that night. Not enough. He woke up and pursued his usual routine against the obvious. Cain went out of his camp and used the eighth path marked with three lines, one across, one up, and one through. Let me explain, Cain’s right path was, in reality, a series of corrections to his initial more direct path. The first, second, and third paths were marked with horizontal lines. Then, to avoid confusion, the fourth, fifth, and sixth paths were marked with an additional vertical line. The eighth path, his most ambitious path yet, was struck through with a diagonal line. The eighth path wasn’t as straightforward as the initial one, it meandered about, but it avoided the most dense patches of resistance. Cain saw it on the eighth path. It’s possible, it can stab at us from the blue, but in line with its own method of proselytising, on our path of least resistance, sometimes it merely observes its subject instead. It stands, on the river of dirt that you made, and studies your reaction to its presence. What kind of pushback are you packing? What’s the size of your congregation? Where do you go to find comfort? When it has filed its report it retires, off to go get its mates. The imperfect light of the forest the only thing left to prophetise because Cain had seen it on the eighth but he had already cut and run using the first.

Cain was not prepared for the nuances of his panic back at his interior camp. Dabs of back and forth, hints of despair, and speckles of formless vengeance. Again he heard howling, not so deep now. The calf pissed itself. Right there. In front of him. Disgusting. There appeared three wolves dancing for him. One on the right would advance at him then shuffle about until it was on the left. One in the centre would step forward and they’d all shuffle about until it was on the right. Constant eye contact was maintained. Then, from behind, Cain heard the forest floor burst. Fuck, what shit did he give? More than wisdom, out of shock, Cain grabbed the nearest and firmest thing he could find, a tree, and clawed at the bark until it buried itself into his flesh. He got up that tree the way things usually fall down. He observed it from his perch. That calf, well, it was like his friend. Do you understand? Animals are dumb, humans are way cooler, but Cain had invested a piece of his soul in that thing. He hadn’t treated it well, but then he had never treated any of his friends well. He didn’t want to watch, and he didn’t watch, he absorbed the path of least salvation.

Wolves do not pluck a loose string. The initial prong involved collapsing on top of the calf and excavating its neck. The calf bellowed out in terror, its tongue flapping, its eyes straining. The next two prongs set about rupturing the calf’s intestines. None of the struggle that the calf gave seemed to be directed towards the aggressors. Its wails were for the thing outside of it that had allowed it to be entangled in this undignified hammer and anvil. It probably blamed itself. It’s comfort, it’s placidity, it’s obedience, they were all factors. But none of them were in the remit of the calf’s operational competence. It’s battle was lost before a stone had been laid. It’s fragile little leg kicked out a few more times before it surrendered to the mercy of the original. No more pain, no more terror. The calf was like the trees, it had transitioned. The joke was on the wolves as they disconnected tendons and crunched bone. The three of them would eat today, but tomorrow? Wait, three of them?

Cain should have known. Any good hunter would have known. Where there’s prey there’s predator. Howling would have told them that the game had started and that it was time to miss the party. Cain didn’t grok that. He had killed his companion. It was his fault. He didn’t know any hunters, not really, he knew stories, he knew people that hunted birds. It was never his job. If he had just done his job, you know? Three of them. Wait, back up. There were four before weren’t there? There’s at least one other hanging back somewhere. Fuckers, little fuck spoons. Cain stayed in his tree watching the redness of their maws accelerate. He watched as the calf, so happy to be one, was rendered two. But, erm, he had to think. What else could he do? What was it he needed? He had with him his quiver of arrows. He looked down and saw two things. His bow, handy, and the barely lit embers of his fire pit. The bow was farther away than the fire pit, closer to the blood and guts soiree. He shuffled down the tree, on the opposite side to the wolves, and peaked round to see their reaction. The three of them were too busy to care what he was up to. But that fourth one? He looked around for it. He couldn’t see it. He went down some more until, still clinging to the trunk, the soles of his feet made furtive contact with the ground. He went for the fire on all fours. He blew on it until it exploded to life. He grabbed a stack of arrows, every single one as it turned out, and thrust them into the fire. Stand up, Cain stood up, they noticed him, but he didn’t want trouble, he wanted them to get the message that they should leave him alone. The wolves did nothing, attracted to the corpse as much as they were repulsed by the fire in Cain’s bloodied hand. They don’t like it, do they? Do they? He backed off towards his original first path, the one that would lead him to the clearance. On that path he met the fourth wolf. But it wasn’t much up for it when it took full appreciation of what Cain held in his paw. They don’t like it. It fled and Cain was gone. Désolé.

Back at the clearance Cain held only what he was carrying when he had left that morning for the clearing. Stone axe, water pouch, a tiny portion of what he had been eating plus, his new expansion, a charred stack of burning arrows. There was no going back, these were his possessions now. Terror. Cain felt terror in relation to the forest. Later, after the terror past, he would feel shame. The terror stopped him going back initially, but for the rest of his life what stopped him going back was the shame. Shame, like a burning wound, that had etched itself on to Cain. Cain got back to his camp, the one he made when he was scoping out the forest way back. He dumped the burning arrows on to the recognisable outline of his old fire pit. Cain, well, then Cain fainted. On the floor and that.