Lying atop the pond, surrounded by water lilies, the child slept. There was no sense of day or night, nor any idea of how many days had passed since he had fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep. He simply slept until he had his fill, and just like that, two days had passed. The child floated atop the pond for two whole days, but then the third day came. This time, the child woke—not because his sleep had been satisfied, but because his body had run out of nourishment, unable to heal or function any longer. The body woke of its own accord.
In most cases, such severe blood loss and head trauma would likely result in a coma or even death. But something about the child was different, something he didn't even understand himself. This difference was not for him to ponder now, for the child was already awake. As his eyes opened, he felt a heavy weight pressing down on him from his head. He felt—blank. Everything seemed new to him, and he had no idea where he was or what had awakened him.
The only thing that weighed on him was the pain from the skin that had peeled from his body, leaving raw, open wounds where worms had burrowed in. And then, there was the hunger. The pain from his torn skin was healing as quickly as his body could manage in these past two days, and for a moment, he understood what had caused it. But what he couldn't understand was the other feeling—a hunger that seemed entirely new to him. He didn't understand it—he had forgotten what hunger even felt like.
Exhausted and frustrated, the child kicked his legs and arms in the water, angry at this unfamiliar feeling. The result? He almost sank, barely catching hold of the side of the pond with his rear arms. His other two arms had been rendered useless, from shoulder to fingertip. They had been bent at an unnatural angle the moment he fell from the entrance to the giant cave. Only these two arms remained functional.
With great effort, the boy pulled himself up and looked around. What he saw were plants growing atop the cavern walls, their leaves glowing with a soft, blue energy. Amazed by the sight, he dragged himself toward one of the plants growing from the bottom side of the cavern. As he approached, wonder filled him, but soon the hunger returned, stronger than before. Without hesitation, he plucked the leaves from the plant and ate them.
But nothing happened. The hunger did not subside. The boy now knew what this feeling was, but he didn't know how to satisfy it. He tried eating more plants, but his hunger remained unfulfilled, growing more intense with each failed attempt. His instincts told him to eat the plants, but his body did not respond. The hunger was relentless.
Confused and frustrated by the lack of relief, the child dragged himself farther, not knowing why, but following some unseen pull deep within him. He moved in whatever direction his heart led him—without thought, without question. Scraping along the cold cavern floor, he soon found himself staring upward toward a faint, distant light, seeping through a crack in the cave's ceiling. The darkness surrounded him completely now, and the glowing pond, with its radiant flowers, was far behind.
The child didn't have the energy to form a single thought about where he was or what he was doing. His mind no longer worked the same—not like it once might have. Even forming a single thought felt like a distant, unreachable dream. And so, he simply sat there, waiting and waiting, his mind blank. He was no longer himself. Without any external command, the child was just a shell—flesh and bone held together by instinct alone.
As time passed, he began to notice small living things crawling toward him—creeping, skittering, inch by inch. They crawled over his legs, up his arms. And then, from somewhere deep within him, trauma erupted. A raw, guttural scream tore from his throat, echoing beyond the threshold of the hollow tree. The child wailed in agony—not because he had been bitten or cut.
No. It was the memory.The buried trauma had awakened.The horror of that first waking—when he had fallen into this cavern.When the insects had fed on his eyes...When they had peeled the skin from his face.When he had scraped them off—out of his missing eye socket.
The pain. The horror. The helplessness. It all came flooding back.
The child, wild with grief and fury, raged. He ripped the insects from his skin and, in a blind frenzy, ate them. Not from instinct, but from madness. From a desperate hunger that, somehow, they briefly satisfied. That frenzy stirred something in him—memory. Fleeting and fragile, but memory still. He remembered the forest. Even if just for a moment. And that moment was enough.
As the hunger clawed at him, he continued to eat the crawling things. Many of them. Until he felt full. Yet even as he fed, he realized—they were endless. The insects kept coming. Swarming. Crawling. And still he ate, until the hunger was gone.
Then, with a burst of will, the child crawled back, dragging himself as fast as he could toward the deeper part of the cavern—back to where the pond waited. Curiously, the insects did not follow him there. They never came this deep inside the cave.
Observing himself, the child noticed something strange: he could think again. Only for brief moments, but he could form thoughts. He had forgotten who he was, how he had come here—but now he knew he had forgotten something important. He tried to remember. He pressed his mind to recall.
But the harder he tried, the more he began to forget.His memories collapsed like broken glass.By the time he realized it, he had already forgotten how he'd filled his stomach—forgotten what hunger even felt like.He remembered eating insects... but not how he had gotten there. The specifics were gone, slipping through his mind like mist.
He understood then: if he kept trying to remember, he'd lose more.
And so, he let it go.
He allowed himself to simply be. With no thoughts. No memories. Just silence.
The child laid his head upon one of the round, stone structures by the pond's edge. He rested there—not thinking, not knowing. Just existing. Strangely, there were no worms or insects near the pond. Only the water lilies floated gently across its surface, and the glowing everturn plants watched silently from the cavern walls above.
For the first time in his memory, the boy took in his surroundings with peace in his heart.