The year was 2751 ad. It was just another day, in the life of the fifteen years old Rokian. Just another witless, meaningless day, that he was going to spend eating what he could, staring into nothingness, and finally, sleeping or collapsing from exhaustion. Fun, enjoyment or any sort of feeling really, wasn't part of his day, no matter how gorgeous the weather was, how beautifully the birds sang or how good his food tasted. He simply had no idea of what “enjoying”, “beautiful”, “day” or “weather” were and meant.

He was randomly chewing on some balsamic grass in the thick of a forest, on all four limbs, meaning to keep at it until his belly was full, not worried if it was really edible or not.

Slowly and uncaring, he just went on, passing over fallen trunks, rocks and other foresty stuff.

Something in there though, almost caught his attention: a glowing, shimmering sphere was hovering above ground, in the general direction of his eating path.

It wasn't relevant enough to stop him, he almost “decided”.

When, after a while, he came in range of the strange object, it started shimmering even more, with rays of black and white. Whatever that was, it went crazy shiny as he “pecked” at it, in the attempt to make sure it was alright eating it. To this creature though, it didn't matter how intense the black light was: the object was smaller than his mouth at its core, it didn't attack him back, therefore... in it went.

He chewed on the sphere, with a sensation of pleasant refreshment, without really stopping his lunch. One minute later he was still gnawing on some other grass, still uncaring...

He didn't get to two minutes though: he collapsed to the ground, belly up and, a few moments after, he farted a little puff of light.

It was way later in the day when he started coming to: the inside of his mouth was hurting like bees had had a party in it and his brain was buzzing like the party had moved on upstairs.

Weird, he didn't remember caring for such a futile thing as pain.

And then he thought...

The little creature had thought!

His heavy eyelids trying to focus on what was going on, he realized he was still on his back and all he could see were green, flat, large, fat leaves pierced by the charming, warm, afternoon light. He sat up and curiously took a look down at himself: he had limbs, muscular and long-ish on all four the corners of his body, covered in scales, almost entirely, with four not too long fingers, hard to the touch, and scratchy curved nails.

His feet were just as scaly but with membranes in between his thumbs... and there were some weird knotty things in the middle of his lower limbs: when he moved his legs, those things bent. He still felt groggy, didn't know why. He kinda of remembered eating weird stuff in the past...

No shinies though: that had been a first. He tried to recollect what he had eaten before collapsing hoping to exactly understand what the shiny thing was: he remembered grass, green, spicy and extremely chewy, he wasn't able to fully digest it either, some aromatic plants, good stuff... he smiled.

Then he remembered gnawing happily at some dirt... with fat oozing green-silver worms in it... thinking about it made him want to vomit, which he did. It stank, badly. He cleaned his bony mouth with a forearm, but after, he felt the need of spitting out more nastiness. Once that was done, the Rokian stopped and painfully tried to focus: he knew he had taken in something else, something his brain now deemed important. He went onward with his memories until he got it... the refreshing round small thing of light! That hadn't come out of his belly. He kept focusing on that specific item of his meal and tried get a better picture of it: he thought of light, bright, both white and silver in color, with a swirling spotted, black mass at its core. Weird. That wasn't food, he was sure of at least that. Yet he still had no idea what to think of it.

Suddenly, he heard sound of water coming from not too far away and instinctively his mouth opened and closed, dry and disgusting as it was after puking, longing for the satisfaction of a primary need.

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He forced himself on shaky legs and arms, as he remembered moving before... he took a first step and then decided it felt wrong. He willed himself up to his feet, with almost enough strength to fall on his back, rising leaves and dirt all around, but before that could happen, his long tail touched the floor and pushed him back straight.

His arms outstretched for balance, he noticed he was very naked, his yellowish belly, clashing against his black-green scaly back side. That nakedness felt wrong too... and yet, pleasant, all in all.

First things first: getting to the water. He tried a few steps, the heavy tail always to the ground, and he felt like he was able of doing it, so he started walking, with longer paces as he went, until he tried too long a step and his knee bent a little backward, in a painful way.

He didn't like the crunching sound it made when that happened, so he stopped to evaluate the damage. He bent it, holding onto a tree, flexed it and turned: it stung and didn't hold his weight alright, but he could still move, so he started walking again, shorter steps, this time. The sounds of the forest were nice, relaxing: birds singing, grass rustling, river gurgling... he soon reached his goal and knelt over to drink: as the water touched his lips he closed his eyes and drank, careful not to fall in, holding onto a tree root with his quite useful tail. Oh, the happiness he felt coming into him as that freezing freshness melted into his mouth.

He kept on drinking until he felt he couldn't anymore, then he sat on the river edge, still latched to the tree, his feet in the water: he really was skinny, except for his middle. Yet he remembered packing quite a punch in his arms. Looking down at the running water, he noticed he could almost see himself into it, but it was bubbling and moving too much to have a clear picture: he was curious to know what he looked like... and he did realize that was the first time the thought had come into his mind. Something was different with him.

He had a puzzled expression while trying to make out his features in the river.

Not good enough: a part of river with placid water in it was what he needed. Nothing like that was around though: he stood up to check better, but he could only confirm what he suspected already. As he was there spinning thoughts in his now less-in-pain brain, he started feeling the need of letting water go.

Somehow, he knew that peeing in a river wasn't something smart or nice to do, but the idea of doing so made him all giggly and naughty feeling; he looked around one more time, to make sure he was alone in there and he let it all out. Peeing felt good too. He couldn't help but sighing with relief as he was done tinkling all over. For some reason, he immediately felt compelled to wash his hands. As he did a sense of righteousness struck him and he smiled.

After a little thinking, he had decided that if there wasn't a calm pool, he could make one: he dug a hole in the black, greasy rich dirt and after a while water surged into it. He knew he couldn't go any deeper. The water got absorbed immediately by the soil though. Easily enough, his brain got to the answer: flat big leaves, the place was covered in those. There were heart shaped leaves, long ones, wave shaped ones, some green, other brown and rusty, all covering the ground. As he gathered them all up, he felt a nice smell of dirt, something he couldn't understand, but that made him feel at ease... still not wishing to eat it ever again though, with or without worms in it. Snapping back to the task at hand, he had gathered not only enough leaves to cover his hole, but even enough to layer them up, so that the water wouldn't flow out easily. Now all he needed was a way to let the water into it.

Once more, the answer he found was easy enough to get to: his mouth was big and his cheek's flesh was thin and stretchy, so he filled it with as much water as his anatomy allowed him to and spewed it back into the basin.

He did so three times, but he had to stop then: not only the pool was full, but his brain felt weird due to the extreme coldness of the water. It was a stinging pain like the one to his knee... in a different way. As soon as the water in the pool calmed down, he was finally able to see his reflex: he was short, compared to the trees, his skin was colored like the forest, orange crests were on top of his head and his eyes were bulgy and funny.

That said though, he didn't dislike what he saw in there. Still, being naked bugged him quite a bit... He turned to the trees once more and found one that had bark thin enough and soft enough to be carved by his talons into a makeshift belt; from the belt he started hanging green leaves, the longest he could find. In a short ten minutes he had made a convincing skirt that made him not so much naked anymore. So, he wasn't hungry, his head was clearing up nicely and he sure wasn't thirsty. He didn't really know what to do though. He stopped for a while, cupping his chin with his right hand and thought about it.