Nameless

My first memory was the sensation of wind whipping against my face.

I remember opening my eye and seeing green and blue; the light was excruciating and I quickly shut my eyelid. For days after I awoke, I still had not moved. The sensation of life was overwhelming. I counted the individual blades of grass which were in contact with my back. I listened to the sounds of creatures I could not recognize. I was too busy pondering to care to open my eye, "How did I get here? Where am I? What is my name? Why..?" I had no answers. After what seemed like a lifetime of unanswered questions, my body began to ache. For what, I had no idea, but soon it forced me to open my eye and acknowledge my existence. I needed to act. I shakily stood up from where I had lain and surveyed my surroundings for the first time.

I was standing between what appeared to be two small, grassy hills. I peered behind me and saw a small tree, beneath it ran a small flowing creek. There was movement is the sky above, and I saw a large bird of prey scouring the surrounding hills for food. I felt another sharp pain rack my body as I looked down at my chest. Looking down, I also noticed that all of my limbs were etched with various scars. My skin on my upper arms looked like it was layered with scars, crossing over each other, giving my skin a splotchy and uneven pigment. My ribs were poking out of my thin, yet sinewy fram. On both of my palms, there was a wheel with eight spokes tatooed on them. I also realized that my hair was all the way down to my waist, and it was stark white as well. After my assessment of my physical condition, I decided that it was time to start searching for sustenance. Why wasn't I wearing any clothes? Thinking about why I was here gave me a headache.

My first few steps were rather difficult as I struggled to maintain my balance. As I began my search, I noticed it was difficult for me to walk because I could not gauge the distance between my feet and the ground. Realizing that this was because I lacked a right eye, I felt the right side of my face with my hand. There was a long gouge out of the right side of my face running from the top right of my forehead to the right corner of my mouth. The scar tissue covering my face felt rough to the touch, as if it never healed properly. After nearly scaling the grassy hill, I nearly mastered the skill of walking. As I crested the hill, I realized the first flaw in my plan to find food. I had no clue where to start. How was I going to catch an animal and where would I even find one?

After exploring the landscape for several hours, the sun had long past its zenith; it had sunk low into the western horizon. My hunger had only increased along with the elongated shadows of dusk. Racked by hunger cramps, I stumbled forward and spied a particularly familiar outcropping of trees. I had been past this twice already. In my frustration, I collapsed beneath a sturdy looking spruce, "Bloody Hell," I muttered. I was going to die and I knew it. That was my last thought as I closed my eyes and was sucked into a death-like slumber.

"My blood runs through the veins of this world," a voice boomed. I looked around me, but everything looked gray, blurry, and distorted. "I was forced to slaughter my children...Like sheep," I could not tell which direction this voice was coming from. "I failed to protect my line...My creation, it destroyed everything," I suddenly saw an image become clear out of the murk. It was a golden wheel with eight spokes. For some reason, this image struck a chord within me and I was filled with terror and rage at the same time. This image quickly dissipated into the obscure shadows. I heard a silky soft voice say, "I know you're awake so stop teasing me!" followed by a girlish giggle. As if to go along with the melodious voice, a face materialized. It was a woman who could not have been more than twenty years old. She had long, gleaming silver hair intertwined in complex braids along with full lips and a seemingly natural blush. Her eyes were a deep indigo in contrast to her pale hair. It was the most beautiful face that I had ever seen. She said, "You really should stop sleeping so much. You miss out on so much of the world. Things change at night you know..."

I jolted awake and gasped for breath. I was covered in a sheen of sweat. That dream left a curious ache in my groin as well as more questions to add to my growing list. Even though it was the middle of the night, I could still view my surroundings reasonably well with the light of the full moon. I saw movement at the crest of the next hill over. Half a dozen black shapes were hurtling down the hill towards where I was resting at an alarming speed. I struggled to stand to my feet, but by the time I gained my footing, the creatures were almost two hundred meters away. I then recognized the snarling group of creatures as a pack of wolves.

I quickly forgot my hunger and exhaustion as I set my feet ready to confront the impending danger. As they rapidly approached, I could see the moonlight glinting in the leader's eyes. I realized that I was unable to tell exactly how close the wolves were getting because I lacked a right eye. I considered attempting to flee, however, it was much too late to even try.

The leader seemed to lunge at me in slow motion, his jaws opening to clamp on to my right arm. Instead of wasting precious seconds pulling my arm back to avoid the incoming maw, I moved my right hand just below his lower jaw. This motion allowed me to use its momentum against it as I grasped the still lunging wolf's throat. The razor sharp claws of the leader raked across my chest, leaving deep gouges in my papery skin. In a shout of animal fury, I swung the wolf in my hand into another wolf about to leap upon me. This snapped the neck of the leader wolf and gave me one second to analyze my worsening situation.

There were still three wolves almost within arm's reach of me. I thought there was supposed to be a fourth, but I was rather preoccupied at the moment. My foot collided with the snout of another wolf with a sickening crunch. I closed the distance between the last two wolves as they both lunged towards my left and right flanks respectively. My elbow painted the landscape with the gray matter of the wolf lunging towards my left. I was less lucky with the other wolf, it latched onto my right arm and began violently shaking its head in order to sever the tendons in my arm. I jammed my left thumb into its eyeball, popping it like an over-ripe grape. This loosened its grip, allowing me to wrench my arm out of its grasp. I needed to get used to fighting with only one eye.

Another sharp pain jolted through my body as the sixth wolf clamped onto my left ankle. I abruptly stomped on its neck with my right foot, killing it instantly. That left only two wolves standing; one eye and the wolf I clobbered with the leader. They looked at me hesitantly before fleeing, likely to lick their wounds. My right arm was hanging limp, it would probably never heal from having all of its tendons shredded. The only sound I could hear was the dripping of blood and the chirping of crickets. As I sat to inspect my wounds, I realized that besides my arm, my injuries were minor. My stomach groaned loudly into the black night. I looked at the four corpses which lay at my feet. They were already starting to smell. "I don't think I will forgive myself for this," I said as I began to engorge myself on raw wolf meat.

I realized I must have fallen asleep shortly after my meal because I awoke covered in blood that was not my own. My waist length hair was soaked in blood. My right hand glided through my hair until I realized that I was able to move my right hand. I was shocked to find that my entire arm was almost fully healed. Healthy, pink scar tissue had replaced the mangled, torn flesh on my right arm. I felt my chest and noticed the same for my other injuries. Somehow, I knew this was not natural.

Weeks passed, and I still meandered through seemingly endless hills in search of something...Anything. During this time, I had not had anymore dreams, they had gone silent. I barely ate and I barely slept, I just continued south. Every day was the same monotonous chore, until I came across something I found quite peculiar. It was a long strip of dirt bisecting the area between two hills. It seemed to extend on forever, both north and south, from my vantage point at the top of an adjacent hill. It could not have been natural, so it had to be created by some type of creature. But what..? More questions never any answers. As I was pondering this anomaly, I saw movement on the north side of the dirt line. It was a horse pulling a large structure of wood with wheels, followed by several humans and another horse pulling a similar wooden box. How do I know that that creature is a horse? I decided to observe this group from a distance in order to learn more about them.

A little girl broke off from the group in order to get closer to what looked like a small meadow. One of the men shouted in a foreign tongue at the girl, and she reluctantly returned to the group. The man must have shouted at the girl to say "Get back here" or something of that manner. From what I could tell, there were seven people in the traveling group in total and there were two horses. As they got closer, I realized that there were two women, one girl, three men, and one boy just past his pubescent years. As they passed my hill, I decided that I would follow them because they were the only form of intelligent life I had found in my short existence.

I had been studying the group for around three days and I had made a series of interesting discoveries. Of the three men, two of them had their heads shaved and they looked so similar that they were probably kin. They each wore wicked looking clubs with metal bands at their waist. I believed that their duty was to protect the rolling wooden boxes. The third man was likely the leader of this group. He had flaming orange hair which was greying at his temples. I knew somehow that he had seen large-scale combat before. He had a well cared for sword at his waist which he looked to know how to use. I had seen him oil it every single night I had been following these travellers. They did not even suspect that I was stalking them. One of the women I knew to be the mate of the leader. She had gentle features and Chestnut colored hair with streaks of grey. In her youth she would have been a beauty, and even now she was still quite alluring, despite the toll of age. The second woman was much younger, however, she looked as if she was kin of the two bald men. She was almost as muscular as them and if she did not have short, spiky black hair and muscular breasts, I am sure that she would have been identical to the bald ones. She looked capable of bearing many strong children. Most importantly, everyone in the caravan had woolen clothes and cloaks. I wondered if I should approach the group, but I realized I lacked clothing of any kind.

The young girl and boy must have been the children of the red haired leader and his mate. They both had fiery orange hair just like their father. The young boy, looking around sixteen, carried a small yew flatbow, and from watching him practice with it frequently, I knew him to be quite proficient with it. The young girl, around ten years old, had a bad habit of detaching from the group in order to explore the landscape. I knew that it was just a matter of time until this curiosity killed her. For some reason, the thought of the little girl being killed made me profoundly sad.

This was a beautiful, yet unforgiving land. Many predators scour this land. I had seen a bird of prey with a wingspan of around three meters carry off an adult goat. I had to stay aware at all times because I was sure that one of those birds could easily tear me apart or lift me off of the ground a few hundred meters and drop me to my death. The adults in the group seemed to be aware of the threatening landscape because they kept their eyes on the sky as they were traveling and they only stopped beneath outcroppings of trees.

On the fourth day of following the group, the little girl broke off from the group once again to explore a dense outcropping of several hundred trees near a small creek. This time, no one noticed the girl break off from the group. I moved swiftly from my perch at the top of a hill several hundred meters away to investigate. As I slipped silently into the grove of trees I heard humming. I studied the little girl who was picking up colorful rocks from the stream. She began to turn around, so I quickly scaled the thick branches of an ancient oak in order to escape her view. With several shiny rocks in hand she began to leave the grove of trees only to stop dead in her tracks. Her eyes widened as she dropped her prizes. I quickly scanned the area to find what she was looking at. It was a bloody skeleton of a man. She began to tremble and took a step backwards. The skeleton must have been fairly new because it had shredded bloodstained clothes lying around it. It looked to have been picked clean by a predator of some sort. The girl began to wail, but was soon cut short by a low growl. Two familiar black beasts emerged from the shadows of the densely forested area. One looked at the little girl with ravenous hunger in its eye while the other crept around to the girl's right flank. I recognized this wolf as the one that bit my arm. I had wondered where the two wolves had wandered off to, but it seems highly unlikely that they were here by chance. More likely is that they were tracking my scent. To know that these wolves were intelligent enough to want revenge was truly frightening. I prepared to jump down from my perch as a stream of urine began running down the young girl's leg.

As wolf with one eye pounced for the small morsel, I leapt down from my perch feet first onto its back, snapping it like a twig. The girl stood paralyzed with fear as I finished off the wolf beneath me with a strike aimed at the base of its neck. I looked at the other wolf as it showed a glint of terror in its inhuman eyes. It turned to flee and I gave chase for a little ways until I was sure it had left the grove of trees. As I was making my way back to where the little girl was standing, I heard frantic voices calling in their odd language. I silently moved between the trees to get a closer look. The red haired girl was now sobbing extremely loudly. Her father was the first to find her and he comforted her with soothing tones as he hugged her, ignoring the puddle of urine at the girl's feet. After weeks of travel, everyone smelled like piss eventually. Soon he noticed the corpse of the wolf and the blood-soaked skeleton and he looked around in fear. "Smart man," I mused to myself. The man obviously knew that if there was one wolf, there was likely to be others. He quickly picked the little girl up in his arms as he carried her to the rest of the group. Now that I had to let the girl see me, I had to be more careful not to be noticed by the group.

Later that night I crept up to their camp making sure not to be noticed. After everyone had gone to sleep beneath the 'wagons' as they were called except for the boy who had first watch. I slunk over to the embers of the fire and quickly gathered up the leftover scraps of pheasant which they had dined upon. I took my meal over to the adjacent creek. It was easy to see with the moonlight. It was a full moon, just like my first night on this world. I looked at my face in the moonlight as I ate. When I first saw my face several weeks ago, I was surprised by my very young looking face. I had thought I was old because of my white hair, but I was obviously just a few years older than the boy with the bow. The scar on the right side of my face pulled the right side of my mouth into a permanent smirk. My eye was a light grey, which I thought made me look like a total loon.

I had picked up some of the language which the people spoke, just by listening to constant conversation while they were sitting around the fire each night. Sometimes watching them eat together made me ache for companionship. I just wanted to talk to someone. After practicing a few words in the weird language, I got up and walked up the nearest hill. I chose a perch with a full view of the encampment half a kilometer away.

I sat down cross-legged and promptly fell asleep under the full moon.