9 : 248 : 14 : 30 : 05

I return to life in a little room in a little cabin in the woods.

The box of a room has one tiny window with four panes stained dim, one of them cracked. All I see through the glass are trees. Dark, fluffy trees, spruces and the occasional pine. One massive wall of green.

The room has barely enough space for a flimsy bed, which is just about big enough for me, and I’ve been tucked in under an old, weathered blanket that stinks of goat. And I don’t mean “greatest of all time,” but the animal. Not that you’ve ever seen a goat, or know what it smells like, but it smells, in general words, bad.

I hear Simon and Garfunkel in my head. Sound of Silence. Hello darkness my old friend. I can’t describe how much I hate that song. And I can’t move. Can't even lift a finger. A complete, full-body paralysis with a broken mental jukebox. I wish I was dead.

I spend a number of days slowly gathering my bearings.

Slowly is the word. For the first three days, I lie like a dead fish, opening and closing my eyes, and that’s about the best I can do. On the day following my awakening, I can blink my eyes six times before passing out. On the second day, I can blink almost ten times before passing out. On the third, twenty-seven times.

In time, I learn the cabin has two other residents beside me.

There’s an old woodcutter guy—or more like, an old branch-picker guy—and his grown-up daughter, who’s in her twenties or thirties, or close enough. Both of them look more or less human. Dirt-poor and famished, but overall harmless and good-intending.

The guy is even shorter than me, withered and lean, his short hair silvery and the sunburned face stiff as a mask. Stiff are his hands too and he can barely hold a spoon in his rough fingers. But when he speaks, he speaks quietly and politely, and is surprisingly educated. His daughter is pretty tall, a well-mannered brunette, and a bit of a busybody. Pretty in her own modest country girl way. There’s only so far you can get in terms of fashion when you have to boil your own soap.

On the fourth day, I can open my mouth on my own, for the woman to pour hot vegetable broth down my throat, after which I promptly pass out again. But with food in my system, my recovery speeds up considerably. On the fifth day, I can already turn my head a bit. My fingers start responding. Day seven, my hands. Day nine, my arms. My shoulders. My toes. Feet. Finally, after two and a half weeks, I’m able to sit up and experience the most dreadful headache in history. My heartbeat pounds in my ears like I’m at a techno rave, and veins pulsate in my eyes, rippling over my field of view.

I slowly gather myself and try to speak. And pass out, dropping off the bed to the floor.

Ohhh.

Three weeks in, I can eat (assisted), and keep seated for brief periods without randomly losing consciousness. Fortunately, my body is light enough for even the woman to catch and lift back up when my lights go out. She’s gotten used to it, knows to expect it. You wouldn’t think she’s too bright, living in a cabin in the woods, but she knows to pay attention where it matters.

She also talks to me. She talks a lot.

Talks, like she’s never had anyone else to talk to before.

She tells me about weather. About the cabin we’re living in. About the house they used to have before they got kicked out and had to move to the cabin. About the wretched village a short distance away from the cabin. About the kingdom where everything sucks, about riders who collect too much taxes and beat up people who can’t pay, and so on. She talks sometimes about her old father. About the mother who got sick and died eight years ago. About an older brother who left long ago, and must be living a splendid life out there somewhere that’s not here, though he never visits or writes back.

It’s one riveting tale.

She also describes to me how they found me in the woods one day, unconscious, sprawled in a ring of flames, as if I’d dropped straight out of the sky. Of course, I can’t tell if any of that is true, but there aren’t many other ways to explain my current circumstances.

A full month later, I sit on the little porch by the door of the cabin, wrapped in a colorful shawl like an Inca mummy, and watch Selia Bengholm hang out laundry to dry. The show’s old, but I can’t switch the channel. Not that I really want to. The fresh spring breeze feels nice and cool on my face. Rejuvenating. I’m starting to feel alive again and inhale the smell of the growing lawn, which is kept short by a skinny goat on a leash in the yard.

“Is it cold?” Selia turns to ask me. “Just let me know when you want to go back inside, okay?”

How would I do that, exactly? I can’t even make a peep. The best I can do is wink at the door and hope she gets the message sooner rather than later.

I stare at Selia. I can do it better now that my eyes are working more or less as expected. Her eyes are green and gentle. Her hair’s the color of chestnuts, streaks of it grayed by the sun, and just a little curled. She takes great care to comb her hair every night, and braids it every morning, even though there’s no one around to impress. Even if you’re poor, it doesn’t mean you have to be all scruffy.

Selia wears a patched dress, which was probably cerulean blue in the past, but now looks closer to moldy gray. It’s the only dress she owns, often partnered with a stained apron. Some stains don’t come off in a wash and the number of them steadily increases.

Even so, Selia looks pretty happy as she hangs up her few rags to dry, her father’s tattered longjohns, and my underwear among her own. The more I look at her the prettier she starts to seem in my eyes. I especially appreciate the curves of her ass when she bends over to pick up socks from the basket. Somehow, that view really gets my heart pumping. Damn!

Then, I become aware of my situation again, left at the mercy of strangers in the middle of nowhere.

Not knowing who I am, or where I come from. Where I’m going, or if I’m ever going to walk again.

I breathe out a heavy, world-weary sigh.

“Fuck me.”

Selia drops the sock she was about to put up and spins around, stunned.

“Did—did you just say something?” she asks me.

“No,” I lie.

Instead of getting fussy over my poor choice of first words, a beaming smile spreads over Selia’s face.

“You—you can speak!” she cries and rushes over to congratulate me, shaking my shoulders. “That’s amazing! Amazing! We can talk—you understand me! Oh, I have to tell father! Praised be the Divines!”

Selia goes running to the storage shed in the backyard, looking for the old man. I’m left to sit on the porch, dizzy from the effort, the front yard swaying in my eyes. Who would’ve thought talking could be so tiresome?

“...I can speak?”

Right. I haven't gone full retarded, it seems.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with my body, or my brain. At least, not anatomically. Just, my mind was temporarily disconnected from its mortal frame, like a machine that has bugged out in the middle of a massive software update. By all means, I should be dead right now, not sitting here, making faces like Clint Eastwood.

But I didn’t die, and bit by bit, at a constantly accelerating pace, I begin to recall motoric functions and basic life skills—and a metric fuckton of completely unrelated bosh.

Who the hell is Clint Eastwood?

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

9 : 217 : 04 : 11 : 52

That night, we throw a little party to celebrate my recovery, though I’m still far from peak performance. Mushroom soup, salad, cow parsley bread, cheese from goat milk. Herb tea. The round living room table is so small it can barely fit all the cups and bowls, which makes it look like an extravagant feast.

I can’t eat much yet, but I’m bombarded with questions nonstop through the dinner. Questions I don’t know how to answer. Questions I don’t want to answer. Fortunately, there’s no need to do much answering, as my hosts are only too eager to do the talking on my behalf.

“So, what’s your name?” Selia suddenly pitches a surprise curve ball.

I return her a blank look.

That’s right. Things have names. People have names. Shirts are shirts and socks are socks. That Metallica album with the snake on the cover is the Black Album. And Selia’s Selia. Old man’s the old man—actually, his name is Miller, but whatever. The point of essence being, whatever I am, I should have a name too. However, that particular bit of trivia can’t be found anywhere in this messed-up head of mine. Which is why I can only shrug in answer.

“Beats me.”

“You’ve forgotten your own name?” Selia asks, bewildered. “Or did you never have one?”

Either way, the result is the same, isn’t it? I don’t know.

“How much do you remember?” Selia keeps questioning me. “About your past or where you came from?”

I suppose that’s a natural follow-up.

“Not much,” I tell her and stare off past the table top.

It’s a lie. Straight-up bull.

I remember everything.

I remember the beach. The storm. The freezing rain. The stone-faced line of recruits. The horrid run through the jungle. The battle in the ruined city. All those stomach-turning monsters. The blood, the viscera. Dismembered heads, torn limbs. Talons digging through skin. Choppy axes buried in ugly heads. Smashed, mangled corpses. Screams of agony and ringing of steel that still vividly echo in my ears. Howls of unadulterated rage that wake me up at night. Flashes of deadly lights in the night. Red. Blue. Green. I remember almost dying. Being throttled. Being threatened. Being scared. Being thrown left and right. Being treated like a bug.

Yeah. Not much of a bio.

“Do you know this land we’re in?” Selia asks me. “Or how you ended up here? Were you traveling with other people?”

“I only know what you told me.”

It looks like I’m pretty damn far away from where I was, but have no way to explain how that happened. I may know a lot of things I logically shouldn’t, but can only draw a blank when it comes to local geography.

“Amnesia, is it…?” the old man ponders. “Then I suppose there’s no way you can find your way back home on your own.”

Home? I blink at the word.

I know what it means, technically, but have no personal context for it.

For a while, only the rattling of fire in the rusted little stove can be heard.

“You are a special being,” the old man finally tells me. “Just how special, I cannot say. But you are not an ordinary human, the same as us. That much is clear only by looking at you.”

I glance at my reflection in the misty window.

With the sun down, my image is drawn clear on the black frame. My hair is whiter than the old guy’s, long and fluffy, and makes my profile resemble a melted candle. There’s a pair of weird, furred ears sticking out from the sides of my head, that don’t resemble any animal I know. I can move the ears at will, and keep them down, mixed among the hair, to look relatively normal. My eyes are the color of gold and see just as well at day and night. Looking closer, there is a trio of pupils in each, grouped like tiny clovers. Freaked me out pretty good the first time I took a look in the mirror.

Otherwise, I have the build of a human girl in her late teens, no tails or scales. I was basically born fully grown, wearing shoes, and even a clueless moron like me can tell none of that is normal. Is my dad Ryan Reynolds? And how can I still be this flat when I’m practically an adult? Are you telling me I’m never growing any bigger? That’s—that’s just so unfair.

“What am I...I have no idea,” I mumble, more to my reflection than the other two.

Selia and her father exchange looks and nod, as if having reached an understanding by telepathic conference. And then turn back to me.

“You’re welcome to stay here with us for as long as you want to,” Selia tells me, taking my hand. “You can leave after you get your strength back, or you can live like this with us. I know it’s not much of a home, and the times are trying, but we’d be happy to have you.”

I stare back at them, at the unguarded good will brightening up their faces. I’ve never known such kindness before in my life and don’t know how to take it. I struggle to believe they could care so much about a stranger they know nothing about. Aren’t they at all suspicious? Aren’t they scared? I could be a soul-eating demon for all they know, and they’d still let me live with them?

I want to tell them they’re dumb and naive, and not thinking things through, but the lump in my throat prevents me from speaking. Being too weak to leave, I have no choice but to accept the Bengholms’ hospitality and pray they won’t change their minds too soon. Where would I even go? The only purpose I had in life is history, and there’s nothing else.

Doesn’t that mean I’m just taking advantage of the two while lying and hiding things from them? I look down to escape their smiles and search my jumbled databank for words to answer with. I find two, which I’ve never used before, and spend a moment to doubt if they’re the most fit for the situation. Unable to come up with anything better, I let them go.

“...Thank you.”

Selia’s happy smile is blindingly dazzling.

“Ah, now I know!” she unexpectedly slaps her palms together and says. “Since you don’t know your name, maybe we should give you a new one?”

“Huh?”

Can you really name people just like that, on a whim? I mean, I might have to use it for the rest of my life, so it’d better be a really good one.

“Hmm. What would be nice…?” Selia doesn’t see any issue, already busy brainstorming ideas. “You have such beautiful hair, how about Snow White? Aurora? Belle? Rapunzel?”

Maybe something that doesn’t get us sued by Disney?

What a silly thing to get so excited about. Why do I need to have a name, anyway? These two are the only people in the world I know and it’s fairly easy to tell who’s talking, even without dialogue tags. I tell Selia that too, paraphrasing.

“Oh, that won’t do!” Selia scolds my reasoning, unexpectedly adamant. “Every person should have a name. It’s only common sense!”

Alright, alright. If it’s such a big deal.

I take a minute to think too. A name for myself—maybe I shouldn’t leave a vital detail like that to others. A name to tell the world who I am. Something descriptive and catchy. Would help a lot if I knew anything about myself.

“Ereia,” the old man utters a random word as he stares off with wistful eyes.

Selia and I turn to him, silenced. The old guy says little, but when he does, profound stuff is guaranteed. Comes with age, I guess.

“It’s a word of the ancient language the elves use,” he explains. “Part of an old saying. Ereia su renná! It means roughly, ‘I’m going on a journey and don’t know when I’ll be back’. It may refer to any undertaking, where the goal is uncertain, or unlikely. Or, so my own father once taught me. You are a traveler from afar. Where you have come and where you will go—Divines only may know. It is customary for princesses and royalty to name their children in the Old Tongue too. What do you think?”

The old man looks pleased with his clever proposal. Judging by Selia’s sparkling eyes, she’s taken a liking to it too.

“Yes, yes! For all we know, you could be an elf princess and simply forgot about it!”

Doubt that.

I have to admit, the old man clearly put some thought into that one. But—

“—Yeah, that’s gonna be a no,” I tell him.

Was I supposed to be impressed there’s a story? It was so cheesy, I’m getting goosebumps. A super girly name like that? I’m not a princess and it’s not me at all. Forget about it.

“I-is that so…?”

The old man takes the feedback like a man, though visibly shaken.

But his nonsense gives me another, a much better idea. Journeys and destinations...Yeah, I’m thinking this is it.

I take a dramatic pause to stare into the flames through the stove lid, before making the announcement:

“...Zero. That’s me. I’m Zero.”

I’m nobody. Nothing. No past, no future. No home, no family. No beginning and no end. A tabula-fucking-rasa. Sheer poetry. I couldn’t picture anything more fitting as my name.

But somehow, I’m not getting any oohs.

“…Ehh, that’s not even a name,” Selia comments with a cringe.

“That’s the whole point,” I notify her, slightly annoyed.

I’m not even a normal human, why should I have a normal human name?

“I still think it’s not in very good taste,” she insists. “It’s a name you’d give a dog, or a mercenary, or some such unsavory character. It doesn’t suit a cute young girl like you at all. We should definitely pick something else.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a weird name, or a bad guy name, or whatever,” I tell her. “We’re picking something to call me by, not starting a world-wide brand. And I happen to like it, personally.”

“We’re not giving you a dog’s name!”

The matter appears far from settled yet.