That night I slept fitfully. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another, cold, needing to pee, something howling, wind blowing, a fight between animals, and odd dreams. Add to it sleeping on the ground, and it was a total recipe for one of the worst night’s sleep I ever had.

Of everything that woke me up, there was nothing I could do about any of it, which was what I hated. I was already wrapped up in my fur, so it wasn’t like I could change being cold, the animals were, well, animals, and so there was nothing there I could do. The dreams were honestly the most disturbing. They both felt real and fake at the same time. Not something that I like at all. The feeling that they were night terrors was a possibility, but they also felt like memories, but I knew they couldn’t be since I didn’t remember them at all.

I had several memory-like dreams that felt all tied together. I couldn’t figure out how they would be when I woke up because they seemed too distinct, but that was sometimes the nature of dreams. While some of them started to fade, not all of the dreams did when I woke up.

I had one that seemed like it was a real memory that turned into a dream and tried to fade. It was of a study with a man in it dressed all oddly. I wished that I could’ve heard what he said, but whenever I tried to focus on the specifics of the dream, they faded away. I had the impression that where I currently was shouldn’t be where I was. I also had mixed feelings about the man that I was talking with, both that I thought that he was kind but also rude. It was weird, to say the least.

The brain was an odd thing that would work in its own way to make sense of things. I figured that I just needed to give it more time, and the dream would either make sense and I could understand it, or it would fully fade away. Either way, the brain would be dealing with the mess, and it wasn’t like I could make it change one way or the other.

The other dream that I could remember when I woke up was odd as well, but that was because of its crystal clear images and that I could remember all of it. It was as if I was living another life inside the dream or that I’d lived another life.

I was a young boy of about eight; there was a man squatting beside me. I knew that he was my father, even without being able to see his face. All I saw were his hands as I watched what he was doing. Right in front of us were three small piles; on the left were brown pine needles, in the middle were small twigs, each smaller than the inside of a ballpoint pen, then to the right were twigs about the size of a pencil. In his rough hand was a horn which he opened and showed me. Inside was a live coal.

The man’s gravelly low voice spoke at an even pace, “Son, in the horn is a coal we must carry one at all times with us. It is our way. Each man carries a horn and a coal when he sets out on any trip more than half a morning. The coal is from the main fire of the camp. The campfire is from a coal of our fathers. We have kept our fire burning from the time we were given fire from chaos. Each tribe has a fire which is from that first fire. Your coal links you to all who have tended the fire before. So we carry the fire next to us to remind us of who we are where we came from. Make sure your coal is always lit make sure you keep it. It is the most important part of becoming a man. Tend the fire of our fathers and pass it down.”

He spent the next half hour or so showing me how to start a fire with the coal. He explained the steps from the pine straws through to the large twigs and how to then move up to branches to set a fire.

After we set one, we let it burn for about an hour, not speaking, just watching. He reached into the fire with his left hand and grabbed a bright orange coal. Then he held his hand open in front of my face with the glowing coal just sitting there.

“See how bright the coal is. You want to grab one from the edge of the fire. If you get one like this that is glowing all over it will not last. It must be bright on one side and dark on the other. No bigger then than this one.”

He dumped the bright coal back in the fire and pulled out another one. He showed me how to pack the horn for a slow burn, and then like all men before me, I picked up the coal with my hand and placed it in the horn. I was crying as it burned my hand. He had me stopper up the horn, and then he showed me his left hand.

“We all carry the marks of the coal it becomes who we are. We carry the fire and it tends us. We offer our bodies to the fire. When your hand heals it will be stronger in a few months the fire will warm your hand when you move it but after this one, it will not burn. Your coal hand when you grab fire from our fires. It is the blessing of order in our lives.”

I went to ask something of my father when I woke up.

I wish I’d known what I would ask, and I wish I’d not woken up the way I did. While my bush would keep out many animals, it wouldn’t keep everything out.

Though the things that could get in should have been small, I thought they wouldn’t have been enough to hurt or scare me. However, one type of creature could get into my protective bush very easily, and it had. It likely wasn’t here looking to turn me into food, but it was here looking for warmth.

It was as the snake slithered under my sleeping fur that I woke up. I’d no idea if I was dealing with a garter snake or a rattler. I was mostly sure that where I was, North America in the southeast nearabout North Carolina, as I’d seen maple trees and pine trees mixed.

It could also be a copperhead or cottonmouth, so I was very unhappy with this. There were few things that scared me more than snakes. In fact, I’m not sure there was anything that gave me more fear of being in the woods than snakes. My fear had come true, and now I’d something moving in my bed, making its way up to my face.

I slowly moved my right hand up so that I could grab whatever snake this was that was moving up me. I was in a cold sweat as it moved up. I tried hard not to move at all. This could be it. I managed to escape from wherever took my memories, only to die from a snake bite to the face.

As it broke through the top of my cloak, I saw in the dim moonlight a diamond-shaped head. It rose up to be looking at me in the face with its tongue moving in and out. Unfortunately, I had two bad options before me as the snake was tasting the air.

I could try to fight it by grabbing it as fast as I could and hoping for the best, or I could try to let it move off. Unfortunately, neither of the two choices seemed good to me right now.

I felt like if I let it go, then it might not move and bite me if I did. I also felt like if it did move off, it might come back again and not wake me up until it was too late. If I tried to grab it, then I could get bit in the face, which wouldn’t be good.

I chose, as I did in most things, to bet on myself. I was loath to let something around me happen to me that I didn’t try to control or plan for. This issue of a snake in my bed was wholly my lack of planning and forethought. Letting it just move on would borrow from later, and I wouldn’t know how long I’d have till it came due.

I did the only thing I could think of to try to live another day. I moved both of my hands simultaneously, one to cover my face and the other to grab the snake. As I did both of these actions, I also turned my head to the left in hopes of not getting bit where my eyes were.