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“…Let it all end. True death”, then, I cast my vote. And a whole reality was no more.

.

.

.

I felt so tight, so weak I couldn’t even move. Let me sleep some more…

.

.

.

Sensations… rushing through me again. Consciousness. Wind?

Above, there were the wide, wide blue skies. Was I falling?

Still, I couldn’t keep myself awake for much longer.

“BOOM!”

As I opened my eyes, and sensitivity returned to me, I was graced by the wavering, comforting yellow light of a bonfire, and its soothing heat. Trying to move my body, I felt myself so heavy and slow, so weak and numb, that the hand I tried to use to support my weight ended up slipping, and I came down once again.

“There! Slow down, now.”

I heard a tranquilizing advice, and not much later, a friendly old man showed up by my side, helping me to seat against a tree trunk: his skin was tanned and wrinkled by many hours under the sun, wind, and rain, and many scars of varying size and shape crisscrossed him all over, but his blue eyes were kind, I could tell even though they were half-hidden under the shadow of a large cone-shaped hat adapted with holes for his coyote ears, whose fur turned gray with age.

“You had a tough morning, that’s for sure. You may want to rest for a little”, he offered me a simple bowl of water.

“T- Thank you”, I replied, weakly, and start to sip the water.

“So, how's your name, son?”, the old man asked, going back to his own seat. “Thank you, darling”, he smiled as a young girl brought him a skewer; only then I noticed her presence there.

She also had blue eyes, but hers felt cold somehow, and her fluffy coyote ears and tail still shone with vivid brownish orange and black, and her skin still looked smooth, unlike the old man.

“N- Name?”, I knew instinctively what the concept was. Actually, I had total control over the language we were speaking. And this was strange, after all: “I don’t remember? I can’t remember a thing from before I woke up?”, I brought my hand to my head, and scratched my hair… noticing long, fluffy ears?

Looking down at my bowl of water, I saw myself for what felt like the first time: wearing the same kind of light leather clothes for traveling as the other two by that campfire, I must have been around 18 years old, like the coyote-girl, had brown and fluffy coyote tail and ears, and a continuous, long tattoo of a hundred links of a chain all around my left hand, shoulder, around my neck, and ending right beneath my left eye.

“You don’t know your name, and now what? It even seems you’re seeing yourself for the first time!”, the coyote-girl pointed. “Grandpa, this boy must be slow in the head, we should just let him go, and let him fulfill his own destiny”, she turned to the old man and suggested.

“And what would that ‘destiny’ be, my darling?”, the old man asked back, sighing.

“To be eaten by the strong, of course!”

“I- I’m not ‘slow in the head’, though?”

“Then, why are you stuttering? You only spoke thrice until now, and every time you started with a stutter”, she approached me, standing up just a few centimeters away, her shadow covering me completely. That close, I could see that she must have been the one that obtained the meat in that skew that she gave her grandfather, dry blood splashes dotting her leather clothes here and there.

“Haha…”, I tried to laugh it off, but she asked- no! She ordered, coldly, without blinking:

“Answer me.”

Fuck. Minutes awake, and I was already messing things up.

“There, there… Please forgive my granddaughter, she’s been trying to prove herself way too hard, since she hasn’t got enough approval for her career choice from her parents!”, the old man explained, smiling.

“Grandpa!”, the coyote-girl complained.

“You have to always be kind, darling.”

“Being kind only puts you in danger”, she mumbled and stomped away, cheeks all red, back to her own seat, on the other side of the bonfire. Even if blushing wildly, she still stared daggers at me from there.

“Well, you may not remember your name, but that is not much of a surprise. Still, we do remember ours, and it would be disrespectful to not present ourselves. I am ‘Sunburned, Of The Coyote Clan’, and this is my granddaughter, ‘Cloudless, Of The Coyote Clan’. Pleased to meet you.”

“Equally”, I bowed slightly, and quickly asked: “Why it isn’t a surprise that I don’t remember my name?”

Sunburned turned very seriously for a split second, before shrugging and answering me:

“You had a fall! I saw it with my own eyes, and tried to help you out. Fortunately, you don’t seem to have broken anything, but you must have hit your head, and got amnesia”, pointing away, to a canyon just outside the forest, he concluded: “It happened there. You must have been running away from something, and ended up falling down from one of the rock formations…”

Sighing, Cloudless talked with herself:

“Here it comes. Again.”

“It must have been that foul beast, ‘Sumixam’!”

“Sumixam?”, I repeated after the old man.

“There, interested, eh?”, Sunburned perked up, and tossed another skewer to me.

I immediately started to eat the deliciously juicy meat whose fat was dripping, melted, and paid close attention to the story:

“You see, son? I’ve been traveling these lands for all my life at this point, carrying supplies and messages around since I became able to walk, taught by dad! And he learned the profession with granddad, and so on, and so forth! But I tell you, son, no amount of generational knowledge was enough to save me from that foul beast without a couple of new scratches.”

A few bites and sips of water latter, the story continued:

“For it was smart. Four and a half meters tall, fourteen meters long! It was a… Tyrant King!”

“Tyrant King?” listening about things that I didn’t know was exciting!

“Yes, the kings of the Terrible Lizards, who rule with tiny iron fists. Though they are more intelligent than most of their kind, it’s in their nature to spill blood-”

“It is in their nature to be strong”, Cloudless interrupted, smug.

Sunburned continued without paying attention to his granddaughter:

“And this one in particular, Sumixam, the one who rules over this area since they are so territorial, I’ve seen him with my own eyes once… Ha! I’ve seen it way too close, even! It set a trap near a body of water once, by destroying all the other water supplies around, and waiting hidden next to the last one it left available!”

“Wow!”, I sighed, impressed by the creature. “What happened next?”

“Well, oblivious to the situation, I went to investigate the strange last water supply from which no one came back as a favor to some villagers… When I fell right into its trap! The furtive foul beast jumped from behind the trees, and tried to eat me! I had to run for my life while employing every trick I knew, just to not be instantly gobbled up, or crushed beneath its paws, and when I thought I had finally misled it, Sumixam would sniff me back right away. I ended up inside a tiny cave, where it couldn’t reach me; it tried to, but it couldn’t, Sumixam was only able to bite a stalagmite, which ended up permanently stuck in its mouth… The problem was: the Tyrant King didn’t leave the entrance! It stood there for days without end, waiting until I surrendered and chose a quick death by its jaws, rather than starving to death in the tiny cave. Of course, I didn’t give up, however! I stood still there for two full weeks! One week waiting until the beast decided to finally go hunt something else, and one more just to be sure”, the old man concluded, right as we finished our skewers: “It wouldn’t surprise me if this same foul beast has pushed you to jump off one of the cliffs, for I know for sure it still walks this region.”

“Why is it named ‘Sumixam’?”, I asked.

“Because I named it like that!”, Sunburned smiled.

“Now that you finally finished your daily routine of telling this same old story, will you ask about his tattoos? I’ve never seen any clan or magical tattoo with that symbol”, Cloudless pointed at my chain marks with her chin.

“There, it’s time to sleep now”, the old man brushed the question away, smiling kindly, and started to prepare his own weaved mat to sleep.

Cloudless reached for meat and dived into the forest, mumbling, complaining about how they didn’t learn a thing about me, other than the “fact” I was “slow in the head”, but I was too weak to pay attention, and as soon as Sunburned’s story ended, I fell asleep.

“Are you sure?”, I asked Sunburned.

“Why, do you have a place to go? Did you remember something?”, the old man asked back. When I shook my head in negation, he added: “Well, then, come with us! The wilderness is dangerous, and we’re traveling to the next most nearby settlement.”

“Thank you, mister!”, I run after the old man, who already started to walk away.

“You seriously will take Slow-In-The-Head just to the next settlement, right?”, Cloudless pressed her grandfather.

“There, yes, of course”, he laughed. “…If he remembers anything until we get there, of course! Otherwise, It’d be cruel to just leave the boy in the city, without a clue, right?”

His granddaughter sighed.

Could this mean… I’d be able to travel with Sunburned and Cloudless until I remember my past? Somehow, that was hopeful! I could already envision the adventures and scenarios I’d see traveling with them!

And, just like in my delusions, for the next few minutes, we walked in silence, and I took my time to appreciate the natural beauty around: the trees grew tall and strong, offering appreciated shade from the sun during the travel, and there were birds everywhere, singing (unfortunately out of reach, impossible to pet). I breathed in and out the refreshingly cold air of the forest, felt the gentle tingle of grass and bushes on the palms of my hand, and even stepped into a stream, in which lived many tiny fishes and crustaceans that avoided my feet.

“Come on, mister crayfish, I’m not gonna hurt you~”, I whispered to the creature. “Ow, ow, ow!”, it pinched my hand.

But patiently, I endured the pain and freed myself without hurting the animal. Lesson learned: even if wild animals are within range, do not try to pet them.

“SPLASH!”

“Wah!”, I was scared by the sudden impact against the water. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Cloudless smiling as she stunned a bunch of fishes by throwing a heavy rock into the water. She collected the frozen scared animals and put them inside a bag.

Collecting food, perhaps?

“What are you looking at?!”

“N- Nothing” I walked back to the side of Sunburned. “So… Where are we going?”

“The famous Bear Mountain school of magic… I call just ‘The School’, however.”

“What is ‘magic’?”

“Already a hard question, hu?”, the old man seemed troubled. “I can’t explain it to you really well, but it’s basically ‘power’. To do anything.”

“Are you two mages?”

“Haha! No, we’re not. And I surely have zero interest in turning into one! Mages have to deal with their own share of problems, like politics, like ugly wounds… like war”, the mention of war made me utterly uncomfortable, but, thankfully Sunburned changed topics quickly enough: “we’re deliverymen. My family has carried the duty of transporting stuff to and from The School for generations! And, soon enough, it will be my granddaughter’s duty too”, Sunburned sighed. “This is my last job. I’m getting too old for this kind of work. Can’t see far enough, or listen close enough to stay out of problems, and can’t run away as fast from them anymore either. Fortunately, I’ll be able to see The Admission of The School event one more time.”

“But… Then, why your granddaughter? Why not your son or daughter?”

And, again, for a split second only, Sunburned lost his friendly grandfather aura, and gave me a deep, analytical stare. I thought he wouldn’t answer that question, but once his eyes noticed the wound from the crayfish on my hand, he finally said:

“Remember that Sumixam beast? Well, I wasn’t alone back then. My two sons were with me. I knew that could be a dangerous task, but I wanted to help the villagers anyway. And now, only Cloudless’ father is around, and he really doesn’t want her following the family profession.”

“Oh… I’m sorry”, I decided to not touch that topic anymore.

However, feeling some more empathy for the coyote-girl, I turned around to look at her, when I saw her throwing the many fish she collected away and into the air, and then smiling in my direction.

Were those fish bad? It didn’t seem so. Actually, they looked and smelled delicious…

Not wanting to let food go to waste, I jumped after the fish, scattering the fallen leaves and dust on the ground, and reaching the flying gift 5 meters in the air and 3 meters away from me, catching them all in my mouth, and swallowing at once. Once I came back from the quick snack, I saw only a gaping, wide-eyed coyote-girl, and a slightly less impressed, but quite more serious old man.

“Di- Did I do something wrong?”, I asked, ears and tail turning down.

“How did you jump so far…?”, I heard Cloudless whispering to herself. Then, shaking her surprise away, she replied to me: “And you still ask?! Why did you eat my fish?!”

“Be- Because coyotes are omnivores”, I answered, showing my tail.

“I KNOW THAT! I’m one too, you idiot!”

“I mean… You threw them away?”

“I didn’t throw them away! And I certainly did not give them to you!”, noticing my confusion, her angered face turned into a smug one, as she crossed her arms, and raised her nose. “I was feeding the weak to the strong. The lives of these weak fish have only one purpose, and it is to feed the strong predators of this forest, the same way that a hare’s purpose in life is only to feed us… I ask myself, what is your purpose, Slow-In-The-Head?”

“That’s mean…”, I replied weakly, averting her gaze.

Cloudless approached me with heavy stomps, holding my jaw, and aggressively forcing me to look her in the eyes.

“This is a world of prey and predator. Hare and men, fish and bear… weak will and strong will. What part of this logic is wrong?”, she questioned, holding tight the strap of one of the many bags full of supplies hanging from her.

“…I don’t want to kill anything.”

“The weak deserve anything that the strong impose on them. Wouldn’t you kill an animal for your own benefit?”

“Even if it was an animal…”, just the thought of killing anything, or hurting a sapient being, made my hands start to shake, and get drenched in sweat.

“…I see. Then you are weak too”, Cloudless finally concluded, and pushed me away, when I fell on my own butt. Without sparing me a glance, she walked away.

“No more bickering around, kids. You’re disappointing grandpa”, Sunburned looked shaken, somehow, anxious even, but simply cleaned the drops of sweat that sprouted from his forehead, and got back to walking.