Awakening in Saarus' Trance

Birth, Life and Death.

His mother lay dead. The blood had cooled and coagulated in the dust of their hut. They say the first breath is to fill the lungs with the last gaseous remains of your mothers soul. He didn't know if that was true or not, but he knew that it was his duty to bury her now. To make her last wish come true.

He walked through the village with a wooden spade on his shoulder, sweat beading down his forehead and chest. Before leaving, he had packed up all his belongings: Clothing, a whetstone and a wooden bowl that he used to eat from. The other villagers ignored him as they went about their daily business: A woman cooking over an open fire while swaddling a newborn baby; A group of men sitting around a table playing dice; A group of young men taking turns at an archery range, practicing for their upcoming initiation into manhood.

Saarus kept walking until he reached the edge of the village where his home was located. He had only been there for two days, but it already felt like he had lived there for years. His mother claimed she chose this place because it was close to water, but Saarus thought she chose it because she thought it would be easier to hide from his father here in these isolated villages. As if any place could be far enough away from his father to escape him forever.

He looked at his mother's body once more before digging a shallow grave next to the hut. He laid her body inside, arranging her limbs so that she looked like she was still alive and sleeping peacefully. As he covered his mother's corpse in dirt he could feel her blood seeping into the earth and mixing with his own sweat in an unholy union that would bind them together for eternity. His mother would watch over him from the afterlife, guiding him and protecting him from anything bad that could happen to him in this life. At least that's what the Shaman told him when he was young and afraid of the dark.

When he finished burying her, Saarus sat on top of the grave and stared at the sky while letting time pass by slowly around him like water flowing around a stone thrown into a riverbed: He sat there until nightfall when all light had left the world and darkness ruled supreme. With nothing else better to do, Saarus took out the small leather pouch where he kept his meager possessions and prepared himself for sleep. He untied the string holding the pouch closed and emptied its contents into his hands: A wooden bowl stained brown by years of use; A whetstone which he used to sharpen tools back home; And finally a small book which had been given to him by an old friend who owed him money after losing every bet they made together for weeks straight back when Saarus was still working for The White Man as an assassin after enslaving himself into indentured servitude during childhood with fake promises of protection from The Black Man who raided their village every night looking for sacrifices or whatever nonsense they were trying to convince themselves of at that moment in time.