That's the last I remember, fighting them off, blinded, deafened, muted by them, tasting them in my teeth, gagging on their death-juices, losing the life and death battle against...bugs.

I jerk awake, twitching, to the tickling crawl of them on me, and I want to leap right out of my skin to escape the horror of it. Arms and legs thrash before pain slams me down. I tumble over wet grass, bouncing off rocks to the bottom of a hill, shedding the beetles as I roll.

Nothing now but pounding heartbeat and a dizzy weariness that blurs all surroundings into a heavy grey smear. Piece by piece, the broken bits try to fit themselves together again. The shattered edges will not go smoothly back into place. Bones grind, sinews burn, and worst of all is the jagged ache of a cracked skull.

A horde of black beetles, corpse-eaters, flesh-gorgers, is all I can remember. There's naught before that, yet I know there must have been a path that led me here, a day before yesterday, many days before yesterday. I stare down in wonderment at these breeks, boots and hands. I run one of those hands through my hair and touch my face. A softly whiskery cheek and chin, the patchy fuzz of a young man. Still, a horde of black beetles is all I know of him. If I try too hard to remember, a throbbing in my head wards off whatever comes.

This bottomless emptiness is so stunning that I fall back on the soft grass and gaze wide-eyed amazed, like a dead man, at the sky. By the sun's place, it must be midday. By the green under me, it must be summer. I remember these things. I can't remember my name.

The sunlight hurts. I close my eyes. Sounds and voices echo from faraway.

"Watch him, lad!" My fingers jump to grab at something. An arrow? A bowstring?

The low growl of a wolf. Cold fear.

The thump of a spear on a shield. "Who among us has an unpaid debt?" The noise heats my blood.

A tiny jingle. The bleat of a lamb. A toad chirps. Whispered love-words. "”Until the moon no longer sits in the sky." Why does it make me ache to hear this?

"My son!" A woman's wail cuts through the drone of darkness.

It's no use. I break out with weeping to mourn whoever I was, am, and should be. Whoever this man is, he might as well have been born of black beetles yesterday or the day before. I drag my nameless body to its knees and fling these arms sunward with a cry to heaven to fill the hollow shell.

Artistic rendering by Winter Mist Manach

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