My greatest friend may posses the first of the legends I have witnessed he is by no means a beginning for my own story. The legends never truely occur at the start of everything and alas even I do not go back that far. Perhaps I do. Iam not aware of my creation after all.

Although I do not know the true start of myself my earliest memory is of pain. A pain I would later atribute to burning. I do not know how long I remained in this state for time is a concept I did not posses at the time but I do know it ended with the sight of the sea; of a great body of water that spanned the horrizons and shimmered in the light of the moon. I was sat upon a jagged black rock, naked and dumb as a babe but with none of the spark or desire to act. The cycle of freezing blue moonlight and burning sun swirled around my head. In all the centuries I likely spent on that rock, I only moved twice: once when the rock collapsed beneath me, and again when lava touched my skin. by the third time I moved the rock was no longer a rock, it was an island.

small plants grew and fish like creatures aproached the shore. I once witnessed one of the creatures attack another. The attacker left with injuries but consumed it's prey. I had observed many deaths by this time and many cases of a creature consuming something. However, it was only when I had obsurved a creature sustain such injury for so small a prize as this that I began for the first time to wonder. "What is it like to eat?" I would consider this a pivotal point as with only such a simple thought I gained something I have not lost to this day. I gained a motivation, an emotion and a goal of sorts.

I squirmed to the shore, as such squirming had been the only form of movement I had observed or performed myself, and bit some sponge from the ocean and some scrub from the land. The action lit a hunger in me I never knew I possesed and after a long time spent grabbing grass I was finally satisfied. For the first time in my long life I felt full and as though something had been acomplished. For many more years I scoured that island, eating and living. I learned to walk and grab but my actions would be foreign from how you would consider a person to move. To me there was no difference between walking tall and on all fours so I would stumble about in both states. I would also tumble down hills as that was faster than my crude walking. Eventually, the plants on my island became fewer and fewer and the sea life less frequent and I began considered leaving. I was starving it was the first time I had considered anything beyond this island to exist. I knew, however, that the sealife left and travelled elsewhere and resolved to follow them. The next time I saw something travel from the shore I walked into the water and began to swim.

The creature was lost before long and I was too far from my island and too lost in the flowing water to return. I swam until I could swim no more and floated until I did not have the breath left to float. I sank beneath the waves and all went black. I would have remained asleep until waking did not cause my immediate return to unconciousness. I cannot say how long that would have been. I know I awoke on a soft bed of sand. It was the most comfortable material I had ever rested upon and were it not for my resolutre quest for food I may well have settled back into my eternal despondancy I had sat with from my begining.

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Beyond the beach was a large number of trees growing from a dark soil. I saw the green and walked towards it. I could not reach the leaves of the tree. I groaned and grabbed a scrub from the ground and ate. It was not long before I was covered in sludge and lost in the forested swamp, sweat covering my body and shaking off insects. Suddenly a sharp pain assulted my leg as mud splashed over my upper body. A long creature with four stubby legs and a long jaw had claimed my leg and was pulling on it. Soon I was under the swamp in the crocodile's jaws and spinning. My leg was torn from my body but I escaped. It was weeks before I healed and for the first time I wished for revenge. I never saw the crocodile again.

 Over my time in the swamp I learned how to hunt, catch fish and move through water easily enough. I learned how to free myself of leaches and recognise the areas of swamp that are dangerous. I also learned to recognise seasons, time was now measurable for me. After a very long time I knew my place in that swamp. I was strong but not at the top. I felt like moving on. I moved to the edge of the biome and gazed over the entirely different woodland beyond. With a deep breath I left my home behind. I wandered around my new home and saw far greater creatures than I had before. there were creatures with huge horns and shields of bone on their head, lizards with great spine ridges and huge animals with necks that seemed to touch the sky. I climbed trees to see the world more clearly and soon saw the crocodiles of the forest. They were huge monsters that walked upright and used group tacktics to take down prey. I resolved to avoid them and kept to the trees where I could.

One day I was grabbed in the maw of one of these preditory giants and brought back to their nest. Young preditors waited expectantly as I was dropped into the nest. Countless times I tried to escape, any time I was whole enough to move. Every time I was dragged back and comsumed once more. Over generations of these creatures I watched and learned. I learned how to walk on two legs efficiently when I had legs and how to comunicate with others. I learned how to empathise, comfort the sad and desguise my pain. Sometimes a creature would empathise with me but they were always in the minority and playing on such kindness would enevitably lead to the death of my ally at the hands of their siblings. 

I kept this pack of creatures alive when food was short and healthier than their rivals when food was apleanty through the gift of my flesh. I wish I could choose not to. Those that benefited from my presence the most were always the meanist. Over the years of regeneration, consumption and observation I began to wonder if there were any more out there like myself. A new purpouse sprung to mind. I didn't want to be alone in my suffering or in my times of comfort.

I have learned over my life that no matter how stallwart a prison nothing can trap me forever. whether it is the relentless push of time or something far more dramatic I will always someday leave. The prison of teeth and bipedal preditors ended dramatically when, in the middle of the day, the sky turned black and the world became painted in blood red and grey.