I awoke to a nearby chirping of birds. The sun shone through the trees in beams of light; wherever it touched the forest soil small plumes of steam would follow burning the night’s dew away. I was wet, hiding in the shadow of a tree and a dense bush, but whether I was wet from dew or my own sweat none could tell.

Life had returned to the small forest, the night had passed and hopefully the danger along with it. My body seemed to move on its own as it unfurled like a flower from its fetal position. I was exhausted far beyond the limits of flesh. An exhaustion one couldn’t sleep away.

Pain. My legs cramped as soon as I stretched a bit. Damn. I needed magnesium, where did I put the tablets-

Ah, right.

I writhed in the dirt for a few minutes before I dared to try and stand up only to slip on the wet soil.

Again.

With the unusual proportions of my body it took only a single misplaced step and I was eating dirt.

Again.

One hand then the other, then knees, straightened back. Both hands against the tree for support. Great, good. I heaved myself upwards with great effort, my vision darkened.

Change of blood pressure, you’re alright.

Catching a coughing fit, I hacked out a glob of darkened phlegm.

So damn thirsty.

Looking to my right, I saw the whole carnage in the beautiful light of day. It was even worse than I had imagined and now apart from the smell of guts and blood there was something else: rot. Insects were already buzzing about, some birds of prey pecking at the remnants, some snapping at the flies. No large beast or predator to be found. Yet.

I wobbled away from the tree and into the clearing proper, taking a stock of all the other things around the camp. As I had guessed, there were some carriages and some tents, between them boxes and racks. Some racks were for food, some for weapons. Medieval type weapons.

There didn’t appear to be anything manufactured with machine-like precision. The corpses donned simple clothes, robes, cloaks or some various articles of armor. Not an advanced civilization.

Stepping closer to one of the more intact corpses I knelt down. It was lying on its stomach and I had no intention of turning it around. Rather, I looked for wounds or anything indicating whatever caused such trauma. Slashes, punctures. Torn out armor, skin, and flesh. Probably not a weapon. Maybe.

“Hmm,” I hmm’d.

A torn limb, not cut off but torn. A beast? Something else? What the fuck did I know? I wasn’t a forensic investigator. Fucking idiot. Focus on something useful.

Water.

There had to be some unspoiled food and something to drink. One didn’t travel a long distance while relying on hunting and foraging without at least some backfall provisions. I shuffled across the slaughter-field to the nearest wagon. The back of it was quite high, I’d have to pull myself up.

Getting a good grip on the wood, I pulled myself up with ease. What? Ah, right, new body, much more athletic than my last one.

There were a few boxes here and there, a chest in the far corner. The boxes had some weird markings on them that I couldn’t identify, maybe some kind of code for identifying goods that merchants used. They were sealed well, nails running the edges of each side to keep them from being opened without large effort. Probably not food if it weren’t easily accessible.

I moved around the boxes to get to the chest. The clasp wasn’t locked, a surprising turn of luck for me. Giving the lid a swift push I peered at the treasure within and promptly closed it again. Cold sweat broke across my forehead followed by a deep shiver across my spine. Why was there a child-like mummy in there?

No thanks.

Jumping out of the carriage I instead tried to explore the largest, oval-shaped tent in the clearing. It had some nice embroidery on the outside, looked large enough to fit maybe thirty people and had its own entrance corridor at each end. Stepping around a corpse blocking the nearest entryway, I made it to a spartan room with a large table and chairs in the middle, a few smaller circular tables to the sides and an impromptu bar-like counter to the far side near the other entrance.

It was a bit dark courtesy of the heavy fabric but I could still make out the remnants of what I assumed was the caraveneers’ last dinner. Unfortunately most of the food was already beset on by insects and I wasn’t too keen to add their eggs to my daily protein intake.

There were no corpses inside nor did it look disorderly. Whoever attacked the caravan didn’t seem interested in the contents of this tent, but seeing as the boxes in the carriage I had searched through were also intact… the only point of the attack might’ve been indiscriminate slaughter. My beast theory was gaining some steam.

The bar was barely a few planks cobbled together, nothing fancy on the outward side, but behind the bar hid a plethora of common man’s treasure. Barrels elevated from the ground by strong-looking stools, wooden cutlery and plates, iron-ring reinforced mugs, some other bits and pieces of kitchen-adjacent knick-knacks, a wash basin with some dirty dishes already soaking inside… no food. One of the barrels seemed to have been used, a tap already forced into its bung hole.

Grabbing one of the clean mugs I held it under the tap while with my other hand I turned the miniature valve. A kind of murky golden liquid started pouring into it, slightly foamy but mostly sparkly. Its scent was unlike any drink I had ever smelled.

I brought it to my lips, the carbon dioxide assaulting my nose before I could even taste it. Giving it a sip, a fruity aroma spread across my tongue followed by a sour aftertaste that only got worse as I swallowed the liquid.

“Bleh,” I spat the rest that didn’t make it down into my gullet. Was it expired?

Didn’t matter. I needed water, not something to make holes into my empty stomach. Searching about the other barrels I soon spotted another one that had a tap already installed, though it was in the farthest barrel from the bar. This one had water, clean and crispy to my parched throat.

Feeling like a beautiful flower watered by the rains of elysium, I made my way outside of the tent again. The sun was still low on the horizon hidden from my view by trees, there was plenty of time to search around. Plenty of time, but I dared not linger for too long for fear of whatever did this coming back, or some other predators snooping around to make use of an effortless banquet served to them on a silver platter.

I needed food but also something to hold water. I couldn’t take an entire barrel with me even if I wanted to, the carriages were dead weight without anything to drag it and any trading goods hidden across the camp would be useless to me if I starved to death. I had to hurry while I still had nothing else to worry about.

So I sat on the nearest sittable surface that wasn’t the ground – a knee-high crate that seemed to beckon me with its curvy curvature – and pondered my existence. Bending slightly forward, I let the ground fill my vision as I absently played with my fingers while I took stock of my situation.

First, what was the nature of my reincarnations? Did everyone experience this when they died? How come no one recalled anything from their previous lives if that were the case? Wouldn’t it make more sense to be reincarnated as a baby, when new life began? Why was I always ending up in already adult bodies? Was I misplacing living beings or did I body swap into a dead body? How was I alive if I could just die as well when the body stopped functioning?

Was this a sequence of after-lives? Was I dreaming and changing dreams? When you die in a dream, you wake up. Was I waking up in a sequence of dreams that were within dreams? Was there a reality somewhere that was the me that first dreamed of all subsequent dreams? Perhaps the me that dreamed dreamed all the other me dreams that dreamed more dream me’s so I wasn’t really displacing people’s bodies but me’s that were being woken from their dreams by dying in the dreams that they dreamed within each subsequent dream. It would be dreams all the way down.

Second, whenever I was body swapped upon death it looked like something was hell-bent on killing me in my new-old body. Be it a monster, beast, other people, natural and unnatural catastrophes, a sequence of unfortunate happenings; anything and everything was after me in each subsequent reincarnation. All the unimaginable indiscriminate ways that one could be killed-

Don’t think about it, keep it buried.

Anyway, it seemed I had escaped my destined predicament somehow. Perhaps what was meant to kill me was instead set upon this camp. A stroke of pyrrhic luck for me, deeply bad luck for the poor sods who now fed the soil with their guts. I made so much noise back there too…

Third, it was safe to assume that wherever this was, there had to be only basic technological advancement if the caravan was of any indication. I could see nothing that would suggest anything special, however it was still a different world, perhaps even a different reality that played by its own rules. Sure, everything seemed normal but for all I knew gravity here could be a lie and the whole planet was flat and the only thing preventing me from falling into the sky was some magic gizmo holding the disc together while it floated in the infinity of space.

There were a few robed corpses around with broken staves. They could’ve been the stereotypically clad mages with magic staves doing magic things. The possibility of magic existing wasn’t nil. If magic was real, perhaps gods...

“Hey, anyone up there who could lend a hand,” I mumbled as I looked into the sky. The answer, as in all of my known memory, once again a big fat fuck me. “Didn’t think so.”

Fourth, I was alone and I had to fend for myself. Meaning I’d have to take care of searching for food, water, shelter during bad weather and at night, making sure I got enough nutrients of different types so as not to slowly starve my body into various deficiency illnesses that could creep up on me if I survived long enough. A society also meant money, which meant working. I could probably pilfer something from the caravan and corpses but I was able to only carry so much and anything I carried was finite in its amount, which again meant I’d have to work. Work for food, for water, for shelter, for clothes, for everything. Work. Work. Work. Why was everything everywhere always so much damn work.

New realities, new lives, same old shit.

The crate suddenly seemed even more comfy. Perhaps I could lie down amidst the corpses and let time fly by. It was getting hard and exhausting even sitting up. Yes, to just lie down and not bother…

Fifth, I was still me.

What the fuck are you doing? Get up, fucking idiot. Stop wasting time. Get up. Get up.

I stood up while resisting the overwhelming urge not to give a shit. Well, it wasn’t like I had much of it to give, but the small amount that forced me to move and try to preserve my existence was still somewhat there. If to at least avoid another sequence of-

Don’t think about it.

I moved about like a ghost from corpse to corpse, looking only at the least-damaged corpses so as to not get my hands dirty. I never imagined I would find myself in such a situation, but as I searched through the first corpse that still held together all I could think about was the blood. There was a lot in blood to consider, how it should be kept inside the body and when it wasn’t, how it should be avoided. All those stories where people engaged in bloody battles, the red juice spewing everywhere onto surfaces and other people who had wounds of their own… I mean, frowning blood-covered people maybe looked badass but congrats on contracting fantasy AIDS from your opponent? Who really won that fight, eh?

There wasn’t all that much on the corpses, a few pouches of coins of various colors and sizes depicting a myriad of things. Money, primitively minted with uneven circular size and sanded down edges. I wondered if I was rich now.

There were a few simple weapons like daggers with a single edge, one you would shave an apple rather than shank your opponent with. Most of them probably had their things stashed in their tents.

So I made my way around, searching tents, looking for some kind of backpack, food canteens, anything useful. When I came to one of the larger tents I found what looked to be the caravan master’s belongings. There were a lot of thick papers and a large map spread across the biggest table there. I couldn’t really make out much of it, some lines that might’ve indicated roads or rivers to the… where was east and west? Not even north was indicated. What kind of map was that?

A few carets on the upper side of the map and to the sides. Mountains or forests. I couldn’t tell. What a useless map. My attention brought me around the table to a bed with a nightstand to one side and a small cabinet of drawers. I searched through the drawers first. There were no hinges for it to slide on and I almost dropped the first upper drawer onto my feet. Papers, some bound books, scrolls. Opening one of the books, I came to an unfortunate realization.

I couldn’t read.

Well, I could read, I wasn’t that stupid, just not whatever was written in these papers. The script reminded me of Asian languages like Chinese or Korean with the complex symbols and no uniform-looking alphabet. No, there were a few repeating symbols, but it all seemed like a single flowing script. Where were the spaces? Maybe it was more like Hebrew.

Dropping the papers back into the drawers I sat down for a second on the bed. There seemed to be no end to the work I’d have to do to come even close to a semblance of a normal living. Learning how to write again? Read? Would I even be able to communicate?

The implications of my continued existence started to pile up one after the other. The tent spun out of control as the world itself began to darken. The sun no longer seemed strong enough to pierce the shadows. The strength in my hands and feet left me, now leaden weights not even a gymrat could lift.

Why even bother? Rest, that’s what I truly needed; to be free from this never-ending struggle with one’s own nature. I just wanted to lie down and…

Die.

“No, no, no,” I whispered. Even thinking about it felt like throwing myself off a mountain ledge. All that pain was supposed to end. The exhaustion that eroded my very being to my bones, the endless struggle to even lift each finger day by day again and again. The expectations to be fine, to act normal, to be myself without being what I am. When did it end? I thought I knew but I was wrong. Who would have expected this? I wanted to end the pain, not repeat it over and over again. When did it-

“Fucking end!”

I heard myself beginning to hyperventilate, but my attention was on the thrumming of rapid heartbeats in my head. Arms and legs started to tingle all over as the world darkened even more so. Chest tightened until it felt like my ribs and sternum would crack from the pressure. Was I even breathing? Pain overwhelmed the left side of my body. Heart attack?

Then I was elsewhere. Once again I was a consciousness floating within the primordial nothingness that was before and that will come after. Yet there was some sort of barrier. I focused my consciousness at the edges of that barrier to realize I was looking at myself from the inside but I could no longer get attached to any of those feelings. Hope and despair. Effort and exhaustion. What did I care? Hunger or fulfillment, thirst or being quenched. Just feelings that would pass like the water of a mountain stream making its journey to the great wide sea.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I looked through my eyes but I didn’t see. Every edge, every angle was colored with impossibility. The distant seemed near and the near seemed distant. The stench of rot smelled sweet and the most fragrant flower smelled like decay. I was floating within a dream.

I got up and walked. Each step I took the landscape changed in unfocused blur. I was in a tent, then I was not. I was in a glade, then I was not. I was in a forest, then I was not. I passed a river, I passed a road. I walked into the tall grasses and the prickly bushes. I walked around trees and wet my feet in swamps. There were sounds but I heard them not. There were sights but I saw them not.

----------------------------------------

A foot in front of the other. Shuffle, shuffle, step and step. Was I walking or standing still? Was I moving or did the world move around me? There was something in my vision but I couldn’t see it. Merely shapes moving, changing. Nothing new, nothing old. Nothing.

Something grabbed me by my shoulder. The world stopped, time came to a halt.

It was like a snap of a rubber band stretched to its limit. Suddenly I felt my arms and legs. The burning of my muscles, the dirt and mud that clung to my legs, the annoying stinging of scratches all over my arms and back. The landscape itself seemed to stretch then snap back as well, now I was suddenly seeing things for what they were. There was an elevated road of packed dirt and pebbles in front of me cutting its way through a thick forest. The sun was tinged with orange low on the horizon.

Where the fuck was I?

“$ß>**÷×.”

I jumped back, almost falling into the ditch but something grabbed my arm and held me from teetering over the edge.

“???” I whipped my head around to see who was making that noise. In front of me, holding me by my arm was a person that wasn’t quite a person. A clawed hand, a deep black furred arm, a furred head; a prolonged, wide snout instead of a nose and mouth; not quite characteristic of a dog or a cat but still evoking a distinct feline feeling to its features. Deep set pair of blue eyes peering from the shadows of a raised brow ridge. Long swiveling upright ears by each side tipped with white tufts of prolonged fur where a human’s ears would be. Bony white ridge dominating the forehead and top of the head with no hair other than black, short fur to speak of.

It was holding me by my left forearm, its blunt claws digging into my skin. Not letting me stare for much longer, the feline pulled me forward back to my feet; back into reality.

It said something again. I couldn’t determine if it was masculine or feminine, the voice oscillating between high pitched quips and deep sounding grunts. Well, I didn’t see any feminine characteristics so I might as well have called the stranger a ‘he.’

I didn’t need to know the language or what kind of species this person was. His stance was rigid, digitigrade legs spread apart and slightly bent. One clawed hand lingering near the pommel of his sword even as it let go of me.

“I don’t speak whatever,” I tried to say but it came out more as a hoarse whisper. I was parched again. How long had I been walking? My eyelids drooped slightly and my forehead was caked in sweat. If it weren’t for the stranger, I probably would’ve staggered into a ditch sooner than later and just slept wherever I fell. So exhausted…

The stranger twitched his head and said something again. I felt the watery feeling at the back of my throat before I could realize how sick I felt. I shook my head even as I bent forward and vomited onto my feet. Just some more mess on my already messed up boot. The furred thing jumped back, this time yelling something and clearly agitated. Fuck, I hated vomiting more than anything else in the world.

“Give me a sec,” I moaned and motions with my hand forward, palm raised. The universal ‘stop’ sign would hopefully convey the right meaning even in this reality.

This sucked ass. I had a body from this reality, a brain that should’ve been filled with information, the languages, anything. Yet I knew nothing. This posed an interesting question regarding the nature of the brain and the storage of information and memories. I was still the same me despite having a different body, including a different brain. Modern medicine did tell us that different parts of the brain had different functions and if, for example, a tumor would grow in a certain part of the brain the whole personality of a person could change. Why, then, with a completely different brain, was I still the same?

Focus, idiot!

I dropped my hand and straightened my back again. “My bad,” I said and shrugged. The stranger didn’t react.

Looking behind him, I saw that he wasn't alone. There were three wagons that looked like something from the wild west, each covered by a tarp. A raised driver’s seat was occupied by two people each, one of them holding onto reins that led to a pair of large six-legged creatures hitched in front of each carriage. A few people lingered near each wagon, some of them the same species as the stranger, some different: lizard-like, bird-like, even a humanoid-looking person with the appearance of a feral barbarian. Few of them were mounted on horses. I guess even horses existed in this world.

They were all kind of just… standing there, looking menacingly at us, each one all armored up and armed to the teeth.

I wondered what they thought of me. Dirty, filthy, unable to speak their language, seemingly completely out of it. Some haggard traveler; a beggar, that’s what I must’ve looked like. A worthless thing riddled with diseases to be avoided.

And yet this one stranger didn’t avoid me. Was it out of concern for me or out of concern for the rest of his people? Oh, maybe I seemed an easy target for whatever they wanted to do with me. I obviously had no money. Wait, I did gather some-

I looked down at my waist. My pants had no pockets and I had no belt to attach things to. There was nothing interesting anywhere on my person. Did I leave everything behind at the camp?

Fucking stupid fuck fuck fuck.

If only I hadn’t zoned out. If only I could understand them. Fuck.

The stranger tilted his head toward his comrades while yapping something out even as his eyes still bore into me. He waved his hand, fingers raising and furling back again, then punctuated with a fist. Some of the people nodded, each stepping back from their respective wagons to create a sort of perimeter around the envoy, and each of them staring into the trees. Were they expecting company?

What should I do? Walk away? Run into the forest? Beg?

I took a step back, the stranger’s expression didn’t change though his hand now gripped the hilt of the sword more firmly. Another step back, both eyes followed me. I realized that some more people were now standing on each side of the road, blocking both directions. I was surrounded. The only way out was to run into the forest. I chanced a look behind me to see what I’d have to deal with and I was not looking at good prospects.

It was an old forest growth, filled with different kinds of coniferous and leafy trees. There was a lot of space between each tree, giving them a chance to grow to large sizes while also providing the forest floor with enough sunlight for shrubbery to litter every inch of the forest soil. There were also creeping weeds everywhere, hiding whatever was beneath them. I’d have to be very lucky to not get my feet caught on something as soon as I made a run for it. There was only one thing left to do.

“I give up, I give up.” I raised my arms. “Don’t hurt me, please. I give up.”

Nothing. The guys or gals or both or neither, whatever the fuck they were, seemed to be… confused. I stood there with my arms raised for a few seconds until I felt quite self-conscious. “This is, like, the sign of giving up, no?” I asked. The furry stranger finally broke his stern gaze as he seemed to raise a brow in askance. Was I really just making a fool of myself? Wait, maybe they thought I was trying to intimidate them by making myself look bigger?

Was I an idiot?

Sighing, I dropped my arms and put my right arm over my chest to appear sincere. “Look, it’s quite obvious I don’t speak your language. You don’t seem like an idiot, unlike me, so maybe you could just, I don’t know, not look so tense?”

When in doubt, speak, even if it’s nonsense.

“Also you seem like you know your way around a weapon. Look at me, do I look like I have any weapon on me? Do I look dangerous? I just vomited all over myself, I am a fool!”

He raised his hand, fingers held together with the thumb several inches away from the four fingers. Then he snapped them shut, and motioned to the left and right. Ah, did he just tell me to politely shut the fuck up?

He raised his head, looking at me but not quite addressing me as he yelled out something. Several answers that sounded the same came from both my left and right. He nodded, yelling something again before motioning me forward.

Stepping over the already dried stomach juices soaking the road I approached him until I was only two feet away from him. He motioned with his hand upward. Jump? Once he noticed I wasn’t quite doing what he wanted me to do, he raised his arms until he was T-posing me, then dropped his arms again.

Mimicking him, he started patting me down, pointedly avoiding my chest and anything below my knees. The stranger grabbed me by the head, swiveling it left and right as if inspecting a horse’s mouth. What was he expecting to find, seams of a mask?

Grabbing me by the shoulder, I was pushed forward toward the last wagon in the row. As we neared it one person, lizard-like in appearance, stopped us. The lizard hissed something which was answered by the yapping of the furred stranger that still held me firmly by the shoulder. They argued for a few seconds before the lizard stepped aside with clear disdain writ across its scaled features.

We stepped to the backside of the carriage where the tarp was tied to the sides of the wagon bow and a small ladder of three prongs was nailed to the left with the rest of the back of the carriage taken by a deep feed through. With a wave of his hand, he motioned me up which I did by climbing that small ladder. Hopefully I wasn’t getting kidnapped. Then again, kidnappers had to feed their victims… hopefully.

As my eyes adjusted for the dim inside, I saw two benches on each side at the back behind some stacked crates. There were three humans there donned in normal-looking clothing, two in what would be typical of peasants and one who had more puffed up clothes and flowing robes akin to a renaissance merchant. One of the other two was clearly a woman, long auburn hair tied to a ponytail while the other guy was a young looking teenager with short mess of hair the same color as the woman.

They all stared at me at first, looking me up and down, curiosity soon overturning into scowls and twitching noses. The merchant-looking fella even waved a hand in front of his nose to punctuate the reason for his displeasure.

The furred warrior said something, with the two older humans soon raising their voices. He replied calmly and the two of them promptly shut up. He pushed me into a small space between the carriage entrance and the stacked crates. With a few words he handed me a canteen from his belt and, reaching into the space between two crates to his left, he pulled out a bundle bound into the shape of a brick. With deft fingers he pulled the strings apart, unfolding the paper-like thing that covered it to reveal a hard brown shape. Giving it a proper look-over, he nodded to himself and reached out with his hand, offering me the… thing.

With a single word he pushed the thing into my outstretched hands and jumped out of the wagon. I guessed this was food? Sitting down I first uncorked the canteen. Whatever was inside didn’t smell like anything, and taking a sip confirmed that it was simply water. The brick smelled kind of salty with a hint of wheat. It was hard but crumbly and incredibly dry-looking.

Taking a small bite I almost choked. It had the texture of dirt. If it was supposed to have any sort of taste I would never know since all I could discern was salt. I ate only a little bit of it, each small bite followed by a deep swig from the canteen. Suddenly I wasn’t so hungry anymore.

There were some shouts outside and the wagons soon lurched into motion. Within a few seconds I realized it wouldn’t be a pleasant ride, each pebble that crunched beneath the wagon wheels, each larger imperfection in the road would rock the whole carriage like a bad roller-coaster ride. Could one get seasick on land?

Enclosing the salt-brick back into its papery cover, I put it aside and watched as the vibrations of the wagon allowed it to travel away from me. The brick also seemed disgusted with my presence. Well, same to you, salty asshole.

I gazed out of the wagon, trees slowly passing us by. I was traveling now; whether I was doing so as a free man or as a prisoner was still up in the air. They didn’t chain me up or anything, the feline even having offered me something to eat and drink. Maybe I was just overthinking a good deed though my life experience taught me to be wary of free gifts. True gifts without any attachment to hidden material or social transactions were rare indeed. A being from a different world acting more human than most humans I’ve ever known, now that would be something else.

Another world. It was still kind of hard to wrap my head around it. A different world, a different reality. What was there to do, I wondered. To taste, to experience, new people to meet. Looking ahead however all I could see was struggle. An uncertain future in an uncertain land, experienced all by an uncertain man with a broken brain. It should’ve all been exciting, eliciting at least some form of emotion. Awe, fear, hope… anything.

Was I simply existing to exist? A character without purpose in a story without meaning?

So what if I was in another world. So what if things happened around me. I was never a devout believer in anything. No religious books spoke to me, though I read some of them. If there was ever a passage that I could relate to, it would’ve been the Bible’s book of eccl… ecclasis… ecclasises? Whatever. It didn’t matter what it was named, only what it said, for it contained that one poignant line that seemed to punctuate every experience as the final truth. There was nothing new under the sun.

More trees, another stretch of the road. No phone to play with, no book to read. The last few years I stayed hidden from the world, rarely traveling. I had forgotten how boring it was. Go explore the world, they said. I did travel some around Europe before money ran out but what I found out was simply an affirmation of my misery. It didn’t matter where I went for I dragged myself along with me. I couldn’t outtravel myself. Even when I traveled through the gates of death.

“???”

I headed toward the sound. On the opposite side, nestled between the crates and the wagon exit, was that young boy. To call him a man would be an exaggeration, the fluff of his beard still that of a barely beginning puberty. He stared at me, waiting.

“What,” I said more than asked.

“???”

He scooted over closer to me. Did he not get it? I couldn’t understand him at all.

“Leave me alone,” I waved him away.

His expression betrayed no disappointment, instead he seemed to become even more determined to come closer. “???”

A hand reached out from the small corridor between the crates, grabbing the kid by the arm and dragging him away. It was only for a split second that I saw what must’ve been the mother giving me a stink eye.

“Whatever.”

Time passed slowly even as trees gave way to open fields and then forests again. Every now and then some of the guards on horses came to the wagon, letting the horses feed off the through while staring me down before trotting away to their posts. The rest of the passengers also ignored me, even the kid didn’t bother me again.

When the sun crested the heaven and sneaked closer toward the horizon did we finally break camp. There were a few short breaks along the road where horses were refreshed and guards and passengers had time to relieve themselves. I found out that the other two wagons also had some travelers, though none approached me, probably due to my haggard appearance and smell.

I jumped out and let the others have some space. We were in a glade not unlike the one I had awakened near the day before. As the shadows lengthened it began to feel more and more ominous. I could almost see the corpses hiding in the grass, the blood feeding the ever thirsty soil.

A hand on my shoulder brought me back to reality again. It was the feline guard that first approached me. He motioned with his head toward the forest line. What did he want?

I followed him away from the camp lest I make him angry. He had something tucked under his right arm. Soon we were away from the bustle of the caravan, which gave way to insects and birds and the sounds of breeze playing with branches and leaves. If I screamed, would anyone even hear me?

My chest began to tighten, heartbeat slowly rising with each step away from perceived safety. It felt like we were walking for hours but it must’ve been only about five minutes. We stopped at the edge of the forest before breaking free from the trees. There was a roaring sound coming from beyond.

He turned around and threw the bundle he was carrying at me. It bounced off my chest and fell to the ground. For a moment I imagined a dagger stuck in my chest…

He hissed something out, pointed to the edge of the forest, then turned back from where we came. I looked at the ground and picked up the thing, unfurled it. It was a robe, one long enough to cover me from head to ankles. It even had a cowl.

I folded it into a roll and, as he had pointed out, stepped outside of the forest.

My breath was taken from me.

I came onto a meadow filled with flowers. To the left roared a slow-moving river that, looking out straight ahead, flowed into a lake further in the distance. So large was the lake that the trees on the other side were barely as large as the tips of my fingers. Beyond them, mountains rose to create a sort of basin around the whole area. I could even see large waterfalls flowing from those mountains into the same lake.

The orange-hued waters of the lake sparkled like diamonds in the setting sun. It was a calm lake with barely perceptible waves disturbing its otherwise pristine crystalline surface. A call came from somewhere above, loud and piercing as it echoed around the mountain range.

Flocks of long-necked birds that peacefully swam across that expanse now rose in a great swarm from the lake, their silhouettes playing a theater of shadows against great rolling clouds.

“Ah,” I sighed, staring slack jawed at the whole scene. I found myself clutching at my chest where my heart skipped a beat. “Ah…”

The trees near and far were suddenly greener, the waters purer. The mist hanging about the mountains now seemed the final master stroke of a painter’s opus magnum. The birds circled overhead and sang like a choir of angels heralding the birth of eden.

For the first time in my life I beheld true beauty. For the first time in a long time I had felt true joyous awe swelling in my breast, that fleeting but incomprehensibly transcendental feeling filling a void that gaped empty for so long.

“Oh…”

My legs gave out and the painting was smeared with a myriad of merging colors as tears of happiness welled in my eyes. How many tears had fallen from my eyes before? They could’ve filled a sea. The tears that fell down now… each worth more than an ocean of gold.

The birds flew off, the shadows lengthened and just like that, it was gone.

“No, wait, don’t leave me,” I grasped toward the fading silhouettes, toward those sparkling diamonds upon the lake. Gone.

“No, please,” I whispered weakly.

“A few seconds more, that’s all I ask. Please, just a moment… longer.”

But it was useless. The apathy came crashing back like a tsunami wave with a vengeance, wrathful at the fact that for a single moment, I had dared to chase it away. It gripped me, filling me, tearing away the last vestiges of hope.

Yet even as I undressed and entered the river, as I plunged into its icy depths to rid myself of at least that physical filth. Even as I considered never breaking the surface. Even as I finally came back up with heaving breaths. Even as I donned the robe and made my way back, one thought still lingered.

In this world, in this place, in this body… there was something new under the sun.