It's taken a while to recall all of it, but I think I've gotten a lot of it back now.

What? No, I don't think I ever lost it. I just think I couldn't articulate it well enough until now.

What makes now special? I don't know. I don't think it needs to be, but it's the only part of time we have any control over.

Where to begin...

I think the first memory I have is finally reaching flat ground for the first time. Green waves in front of me, all sort of...dancing in unison. The way they shifted wasn't in any way demanding of my attention. It simply greeted me, whenever I felt ready to be greeted. I don't think I was much taller than the grass, but I could still see enough over it. The guiding stars were still dotting my way forward, and I remember imagining them like little versions of myself, pointing me in the right direction.

It made me feel less alone. I don't think I knew what the feeling was back then. It's a retrospective observation.

And I remember that little voice in my head. I remember asking it a question, albeit without using words.

How? I don't know. I'm magical.

All I remember asking it was if it knew where we were. All it said back was 'I don't know'.

I turned to try and get a grasp on where I was, and I remember seeing the ground rising from underneath my feet. A sheer wall, east to west. The grass that clung on to it wasn't nearly as tall, and it didn't travel very far. Jagged rock faces waited to impale anyone who slipped on the ice caps and tumbled. It didn't get me though...somehow. A great aegis of the grass plains. It only makes sense something so pleasant had such a fearsome guardian.

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Aegis is an interesting word. Perhaps toll gate is more accurate. It took something from me, and I'm sure that's why I don't remember anything before this memory.

But the plains were what gave me self-awareness.

For the first time I found that I had ten fingers, and ten toes. That there was dirt in my pores and between my digits, and I remember trying to scrape it all out. I heard my breathing for the first time, and I found there was a piece of me that I could take off, and put back on. Where I got those rags, I honestly couldn't tell you. My hair, I recognised it to be the same colour as the moon. I remember being chuffed with myself at that revelation.

I remember walking for the first time, how the soil and grass played with my sensations, and how the wind that carried the grass into dance carried me into it as well.

I began to run.

I remember running. I remember how free it felt knowing that I was running, feeling that I was running.

I remember how self-awareness betrayed me, when I questioned why I was running, what I was running from.

I remember running fast, and faster. Not caring for the dance of the grass plain, nor the sound of the wind, nor the bastion that stood watch behind me.

There was something in the places I couldn't see, and I wasn't confident I could outrun it.

Darkness? Yeah, there was plenty of that, but I was used to it.

In there. In my head. I couldn't see what was in there, and I had no clue what else to do but run. So I ran.

I followed my guiding stars as their little shrill laughs mocked my fear. The grime in my pores grew in presence, and it felt disgusting.

The grass grew. The lying grass grew around its prey and it invited the absolute darkness to sink its teeth into my neck.

So I kept on running, and running, and running.

And there was a village. It was on fire.