[i]Bored mostly...[/i] I remember awakening in darkness, held in place by great gripping hands; vines? Straps! I wriggle and fight but I bang my head against something hard, a box? A coffin~? I panic. I scream! Let me out, let me out! Gods help me! Let me out! It’s no use, I weep, I shiver… I pray. The mind protracts time, invents possibilities for hours and then they are shattered by a hiss of hypobaric seals. I scream; I claw at the lid of my prison. It flies away and strikes metal, I stumble into darkness. I fall. I land hard and my back screams in pain, I blackout. My eyes open to darkness, the ground is like sand. My body is sore, my back hunched. I spot a flicker of light in the distance. A memory of lights flashing in the darkness, I feel fear, I hide from the lights. Gods what is this thing, get it off, oh god it hurts, LET ME GO! I tear at the metallic creature clinging to my neck, I barely notice it before it encircles my throat, it tightens and cuts with it’s edges. It resists me, but with a final desperate grapple, and a pop as it opens, broken, it falls writhing to the ground. It skitters and hisses away. I huddle into the corner of the darkened world afraid it will return… I wait for what seems like hours… it doesn’t return. My feet find smooth metal, and light appears ahead, sunlight… I break into a run. Blinding. Like something I can barely remember, some instinct causes me to cry out, a wave a joy washes over me as I come out into the light, my eyes ache and my arms rush to cover them. Blurry still, this new world comes into focus. The sun, a word I know. A word… A word! I scream it to the sky, I know many words, Tree, rock, sky, water, dark, light… metal. The thing in the Dark was a metal thing. I am standing on a high place intricate and sprawling markings cover the ground etched in stone and metal alike, behind me a great metal mountain rises, no… a-. The wall stretches for miles into the distance passing over true mountains of rock as if laid upon them from the sky, and in the other direction it trails off for miles into vast flat nothingness. His prison lay beneath that wall… What great and terrible things could have made such a place? My head… I am dizzy. I carefully sit and huddle my arms about me. What is this? My body is damp from the prison, the air is cool but the sun is warm and the hot metal stings my rear. I move to dull warmth on the rock. Why am I naked? I feel oddly comfortable in this state, but something guides my mind, some fear in defense of my genitals… Where are my genitals? A smooth bare surface of flesh covers my crotch, neither a man nor a woman. What am I? I inspect my body; what do I hope to learn? My breast is taught and bony, and my abdomen sunken in, my ribs are pronounced, my arms and legs are thin but muscular, slender and defined. My face is soft and fleshy my nose, pointed and tapered, and my head is bare of anything. What… is this? I ponder for an hour and see that the sun is moving, time must be wasting away. I struggle to my feet and move on into the world. As I wander towards another spectacle, my mind wanders along as well. I know words; things, the sun will set soon, but how do I know it will? I cannot remember anything before the coffin, I would prefer to remain here in the sun. Memory can be dark, I know that too. But how do I know it? A word… Rho spelled r h o… someone like me had said that once, was that from before the Coffin? The Coffin… a word that meant a vessel for a corpse to be buried deep… had I been dead? How can I be awake if I am dead? What came before?! Rho, spelled r h o. In front of me a great forest surrounds great and monolithic metal mountains in the distance, as I descend from the wall, they shrink behind the thick and verdant foliage. The darkness of the forest fills me with dread, and I feel a pain in my belly. I’m hungry… I carry on walking, what is my intent? Is there someone who made my Coffin? Made the metal wall and the mountains. My stomach growls angrily and I clutch my body in pain, I collapse bright flickering sparks of light cloud my eyes, and I hear a sound like the joy I felt when I first stepped into the sun, the trickling of water. I crawl painfully and manically toward the sound and fall head first into a modest and gentle stream. I drink deeply of the water and emerge onto the shore retching and coughing violently as it comes tumbling back up, it is blackened with dead mucus and old blood. I clean my body of what filth has accrued and drink slowly, my fire filled body is cooled and my stomach murmurs grudgingly, I sit and feel my strength slowly returning. It is then that I spot them in -blam!- desperate excitement. Apples, ripe apples growing from the trees! I climb feebly to a bountiful branch and carefully seize a few, in my fervor I lose my footing and my grip is lost, I fall a short distance and land well before a shower of apples pelts my head. There could be better ways to get apples, but I am starving, and they are delicious. My body flushes and my eyes feel heavy, 5 apples and my stomach has become bloated, ungratefully it rolls with determination, I decide perhaps to eat fewer at once next time, I decide I will sit for a while, but not too long. I fade into a long and dreamless sleep