The man resembled a shepherd. He wore a rugged tunic, carried a pack of food and supplies that said he wouldn’t wander more than a day or two’s journey from his home and held a big stick. The shepherd was uncharacteristically quiet; he did not click his tongue or holler at his livestock. His stick was not very quiet; a green orb at the head glowed like the great river and some of its streams do on spring and summer nights. The wood was smooth, polished and etched with tattoo-like images of the impressive cattle that were his charge. His clothes were that of a shepherd in structure and function, but had the crisp freshness, deep colors, patterns, and textures of a city merchant’s clothing. The cattle were bigger than any bovine, wild or domestic, anyone from anywhere else in the world would have ever seen. Their fur was thick, soft, and incredibly breathable. When harvested and threaded into cloth, it proved to be very comfortable, durable, and versatile. Their milk was incredibly creamy. The village was known to produce the highest quality and quantity of butter in the region. Other villages gave up on their livestock and relied on this shepherd's village for their dairy and wool, focusing on growing crops instead.

This village of shepherds with their illuminated staffs had a strange power over their rare cattle others could not replicate. Others could not herd such magnificent creatures or harvest their resources. These herds would rule the steppes if it weren’t for their uniquely powerful shepherds. They would overrun the crops and starve any other livestock of their sustenance. Humans would have to hunt them down over ages to a level where the paradisiacal meadows and rolling hills could be settled on and cultivated. But, these shepherds found a way to tame them and establish themselves, allowing a whole adjacent society of villages, towns, and eventually a city serving as the home and destination of merchants and their vessels on the great river’s banks.

Foreigners were in awe of the city on the glowing river and its attractive clothing and rich stews and soups. Its dwellers lived comfortably, tending to their businesses, trading and consuming the local villagers’ products. It produced world famous artists and scholars that represented its people in lands the shepherds had never heard of.

Locals were in awe of the shepherds. They wondered about the secrets and history hidden away in their especially remote and insular community. No one dared prod the powerful shepherds for them.

The shepherds kept to themselves, spoke their own dialect and interacted with others minimally. No one visited their village. No one climbed the steep steps to their shrine for their divine spirits. No one saw me turning the spiritual mill like a bull would power a well to irrigate fields from dawn to dusk.

They did get to see the shepherds’ festival held every four months. It was a tournament between bulls competing for mating privileges. They were exposed to the pheromones of the most fertile cows, putting them in ultra competitive and violent states. They were released into an arena where they would charge at each other, their magnificently curly horns clashing and tangling. They would wrestle. Their respective shepherds would stand stoically and watch intently, their pulsing staffs and focused eyes the only signs of life. Eventually, one of the bulls would be knocked off balance and the winner declared. The intense battles were sights to behold. Dirt turned under hooves, dust flew around them and immense muscles rippled under layers of wooly fur.

Eventually, there would be one champion bull remaining. This bull would spend the next four months mating with whichever cows it liked from every shepherd’s herd. Every herd benefited from this system. The winning shepherd proudly carried bragging rights.

Merchants timed their travel to the city on the glowing river to witness this spectacle. They were in awe of the size of the beasts. People from all over the region would gather in the fairgrounds outside the city to participate in their most consistent festival.

Merchants were ambitious and adventurers curious, but the masters of these bulls were an intimidating lot to challenge for information. The only answer they could extract was, “We are blessed by the spirits.” As unsatisfying as this answer was, it was truer than any of the inquirers ever guessed.

While the spectacle of the mating festival was being enjoyed by others in the city on the river bank, I continued my monotonous labor by the shrine, quite literally powering the entire regional civilization.

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Your bright eyes drew him into the depths of a vitality fueled by the anguishing souls of young men.

His brother raised an eyebrow and shook him. Ivan looked back, startled. He refocused on you as you passed by and watched you walk into the shrine chambers where I rested through the night. He watched you and the others on duty disappear with the food you’d prepared and oils you would bathe and massage me with.

His soul burned.

“Let’s go,” said his brother.

Ivan followed mutely, lost in his obsession.

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He isn’t the first person to look at you so deeply, nor would he be the last. People can’t help themselves, even the most well off of us are deprived of you. It is a cursed existence, to be longed for by everyone except the one you long to serve.

It is a better week when you are on rotation. You help prepare the nourishing meal devotedly, gratefully. The focus is peaceful. Then, it is time to carry the food and supplies up to the shrine chambers. The stairs are lined on either side by chanting villagers. Many have their eyes closed or are otherwise immersed in devotion. Many sights linger on you. You do your best to avoid eye contact and escape into the communal reverie but it is only natural for your vision to be drawn towards those looking at you. The struggle is maddening. Finally, relief. The chanting crescendos distantly outside the confines of the stone chambers. Your eyes fall on me. We do not speak, nor do I otherwise acknowledge your presence. After all, I am much too exhausted- and bored; so incredibly bored.

I feel restless yet am unable to do anything but. As you help draw the bath, lather and message me, cloth me comfortably and feed me healthily, we share a knowing. We know something of each other's pain, the pain of cursed blessings. If only we could experience the two phenomena separately, as the antonyms others perceive them to be, so that we may experience bliss purely and mark curses as to be tolerated. Instead, I seek escape from what others thirst for. I have lost the ability to be grateful. I am left only with the ability to wait impatiently for the end of my service.

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Ivan could not rest either. He was sweating in his bed, unable to even keep his eyes closed. Finally, he gave up and stepped outside, hoping to cool down and feel some sense of peace. He could not. His eyes drifted from the stars down across the rooftops adjacent to his until they rested on the one he knew houses you and your family. There were a few silhouettes similarly occupying other rooftops, other young people full of similar angst not yet settled in and accepting of their place in life. He was sure they were pining for the same woman that haunted his night.

If only I were him, he thought of me. His face contorted into something like a scowl or a smirk as he looked towards the shrine looking over the village. If only…

Today, I die and achieve release from my pining. Either I am reborn as the man I wish to be or cease to exist at all.

Ivan wrote this on the wall in front of him as light broke over the horizon behind him. The blood revealed its redness as the sky brightened. He looked up at the shrine one last time before quietly walking away to prepare himself.

He did not tell his brother about his plan. He did not tell anybody. They all would have done anything to stop his seemingly suicidal idea, but Ivan couldn’t let them do that. For him, it was you or death, and this was the path to either.

He was there at dawn when you and the other women accompanied me out to my station until dusk. I noticed him and his body language, and smiled. It hurt to do so- it must have been a very long time since I used the muscles in that way. But, I couldn’t help it.

Ivan was not there to pay his respects to me or the spirits from whom my labor drew power. No, he was there to replace me.

“25th,” he called to me, returning my smile with a smirk. “I challenge you for the position of the 26th.”

At last.

I stand wearing a bull’s skull as a helmet, facing Ivan wearing the same across the cleared ground from me. The crowd watches quietly. No one cheers. No one analyzes. No one speculates. They must all believe I will win without a doubt. I don’t blame them, considering how well developed my body is. They do not know how the process that built this body has broken the man inside the muscular armor.

I can see Ivan steeling himself, focusing on the battle in front of him and the state that drove him to choose it. I once desired the position that he does and have now grown to despise it. This fool is my only escape. A war cry as determined as I had once been escapes Ivan. He charges. It has begun, and just as quickly, I have ended it. I bleed out on the horn of Ivan’s helmet that has punctured my abdomen. The crowd gasps and the world blurs, colors bleeding into each other and creating a blank oblivion.