You will bear the weight of the world upon your shoulders. Your knees will bend and buckle. Your back will break. Every drop of blood in your body will be excreted through your pores. Yet no matter how you beg for the reprieve of death…you will never be crushed.
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Life.
In its natural state the circle of life could be, in analogy, related to that of the lunar cycle. Following the ecliptic path to and from sight; waxing from birth, manifested as if from nothing, rising to its zenith and shining profoundly, defiant of the darkness behind it. It is a beauty at first, but then it atrophies. Nature does not permit eternal life, and as the lunar mass falls so, too, does its splendor. Until, at the epitaph of its existential being, the satellite fades from all perception. Yet this is not the end.
Luna Firma, life itself, is born from the death of its predecessors. The cycle is both ephemeral and eternal, joyous and wrought with sorrow, of little import to the universe and of great import to the beings exhibiting it. Life stands with and against nature in a truculent, bellicose agape.
This is how life was meant to be, this is natural. Evolution is merely a new phase in each cycle. There is one force, however, one deplorably perverse enigma, which has the preternatural ability to obfuscate this beauty. I speak of humanity: the bane of nature, the object of the world's enmity, and the artifice of natural selection.
The artificial evolution produced by our perverted nous has subverted the intentional path of nature's balance. We are a smoke which obscures the moon's luster, ignited by our own hands and burning to fuel our own machines of war. The light which stands so harmoniously with nature is once again blackened by our hollow, otiose and supercilious lives. This I cannot tolerate. This I cannot abide. This I shall not permit… That is what I wanted, but now…?
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I have always been an incorrigible coward. Fear has chained me to a fate worse than death. Fettered by inexorable terror of inconceivable magnitude, bound in an ambit beyond all sane reasoning, I am constrained to act for the sole purpose of one thing: self-preservation. I am a whimpering whelp seeking the sweet reprieve of solitude, of peace, cradled by the Earth I love so dearly; but my Fear, as none other has known it, prevents such juvenile fantasy. I am weak. I am afraid. I am pathetic. I am powerless to make the world I desire. I am a Monster. I am afraid…
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Where am I now? What is this barren hellscape, deprived of all life's beauty? I would like to believe I did not know the answer – alas it is a world I have wrought with my own two hands.
I sit now upon an upturned boulder: one of the countless fruits of my labors of detestation. Staring blankly into the vast horizon, the empty void stretching eternally before me, I can't help but ponder how long I will have to wait this time. How long before I am reborn once more? How long before my life and sins are swept clean, and the cycle of scorn be born anew, nothing but my anamnesis and body retained?
I am the aegis of a world no longer worth protecting. That is, if it ever was worth protecting. The mana surges forth from my core, I have no fear of the Shadow any more, and I am free to act. I laugh sardonically, "Freedom?"
I turn my palm up towards the sky and gaze into the bloody coat wreathing it. I am disgusting. I bring the diamond staff out of my chest, plunging my hand into my sternum and pulling both blood and the carbon byproduct out with an excess of force. It was not necessary to mutilate myself so; it is a trivial affair to shuffle matter about my body anymore. Why, then, did I open that small hole in my chest? Do I offer my blood as penance for the atrocities I have committed? No, I know myself better than that, if anything I merely tried to fool myself into believing such idle fantasy.
The blue, crystalline diamond rod is approximately 3 cm in diameter and nearly 2 meters in length. With much temperance I had instilled the substance with my own mana signature, and as a result it reacted to my will exceedingly well. It was, in every sense of the word, a part of my own anatomy. I stored it within myself, typically within the superficial fascia, when not in use. With my considerable affinity for Earth magic, and sizable capacity, I could manipulate it as well and with as little active thought as any muscle.
It was not subject to any form when exposed to my mana, but when I willed it the substance could become the most impregnable and dense matter in the known world. I could excrete it through my pores and flesh as easily as water through a strainer, but once removed from my signature it became rigid and hard, stronger even than natural diamond. It was a weapon of the greatest offence and an armor of the greatest defense.
However it also served another purpose: one far more important than as that of a weapon. Many years ago, as my memory retention began to diminish, I tempered the matter even further with my magic. I utilized my ability to make an external storage device, of sorts, out of the staff. Housed within this weapon are the memories of an 18,000-or-so year old man, the remembrances of innumerable atrocities and enormities.
Memories spanning worlds, universes, time and loss. Everything I knew and everything I would ever learn could be found sealed deep within the recesses of this staff's molecules. The human brain can only retain so much information before it begins to depreciate. With my extensive knowledge of the arcane arts I was able to subvert the natural process of this depredation of mental faculties. I wanted to remember everything; every last reviling detail of my abhorrent life and the acts therein.
I twirled the staff around in my hands, the blood staining my vile fingers wiping on the smooth crystalline surface, and contemplated what to view. I had nothing to work for, now, and time was the only resource I had to manage. I would attempt, in all futility, to justify my actions, knowing full well the impossibility of this supposition. I was, after all, of human flesh and blood. Of all the experiences I have ever lived through, I can postulate but one theorem as absolute fact: humanity is the one true, infallible evil.
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With the aid of my staff I am able to recollect any amount of knowledge to a degree far transcending that of the average human. However, I am still subject to the natural biology of our species. That being said: it is impossible for me to recall, artificially, memories I possessed prior to my integration with the diamond. Everything I remember of my first life and earliest childhood is stored exclusively within my own nous.
I suppose, if I had the inclination to do so, I could impart these memories into my staff; but I feel there is no reason. If I cannot maintain my mental fortitude enough to remember that brief and exceptionally important time in my life then I do not deserve to live. Unlike memories I hold within the diamond, these ones are raw, unrefined. Certain details become hazy over time, and at times I question what really transpired; natural thought lacks the authority of photographic implantation.
I would have lost, long ago, what little remnants of sanity I possessed were it not for my staff. How I long for the innocence of my childhood; the blissful ignorance, the primal instinct, the carefree joviality… Yes, perhaps I should start there. The birth of the monster, or what little my undeveloped mind remembers of it.
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Humans are prone to sentimentality, and while I would like to claim I am different in this regard, I myself have fond memories of my home. My childhood was not a typical one, by human standards, primarily because it was not by human hands that I was reared and educated.
In the far north of the planet I knew as Gaea, in the small frozen island-continent known as Ferossa by the humans, lived a hardy species of tundra coyote. These coyotes were extraordinarily resilient; they dug deep burrows in the ice, hunted with keen instinct and silent paws, and scavenged with olfaction so powerful they could pierce the bland scent of snow.
The tundra coyotes are a tad different in their social structure than your customary plains pack. Our group, in particular, was strange even among the Ferossan species. Tundra coyotes, Canis l. Niflhel, as a means of survival, tend to run larger communities spanning generations. Packs were held together by necessity, as hunting in such a barren environ could be difficult without teams and coordination, Ferossa was a continent in which it was impossible to survive by primal force alone.
Among the Canine subfamily, and particularly of the Canis genus, I have always found coyotes to delineate the very essence of survival and instinct. They will scavenge when available, hunt when they must, and beg when possible. They live for nothing more than life: to eat, to procreate, and to perpetuate the self and the species. The coyote will not hide behind a guise of honor or pride, they will not mince words and spout nonsense about selflessness, and they will not hold anything or anyone sacred. A coyote lives only to satisfy the basis of life.
So why, on that day, did my mother find me? What cumulative concoction of hormones and chemicals made her decide to not only spare my life, but to take me under her wing? What was this empathy she felt for me?
Fate had dictated me dead. For reasons I am, to this day, confounded by, I managed to live through a situation which demanded death. I know little of what transpired, as I was but a mere infant and my brain had yet to develop enough to warrant reliable anamnesis. What I was able to discern, later in my life, was that my birth parents must have had some business on the continent where man does not tread. I was likely conceived in Ferossa itself, for no sane woman would choose to birth a child in such rugged environment. Something happened to them, however, and shortly after my birth they both perished.
I was left to the mercy of the sub-zero temperatures of the Ferossan winter. The prospect is inconceivable, especially when I consider the fact that the one to come across me was a coyote, but I was saved from that imminent frost. A roaming young female coyote came across what should have been easy prey, one which was living and as of then unclaimed by the frost. My flesh and hot blood would have been an irresistible call to any creature of the tundra, and yet for some unfathomable reason she chose to let me live.
Coyote packs are typically small and condensed, on average between four to eight closely related adults and their respective offspring. Contrary to popular human belief the bonds between the pack members is a strong one, indeed, in spite of the fact that the association between members is kept to a minimum. Pack members will often form a single strong bond between their hunting partner, or in rare cases partners, and lesser, though equally valid bonds with the rest of the pack. The strength of the bonds is shown in respect; coyotes are introverted by nature. For some reason humans cannot understand how the familial bonds of the pack can be strong when they leave one another to their own devices, the socially contrived creatures that we are.
The bitch who found me was pregnant with her first litter, I believe, which may lead to some, albeit improbable, credence to the fact that she adopted me into the pack. Perhaps it was her motherly instincts which lead her to assume an interspecies alloparental role. As it turned out she was also the dominant member of the pack, her position won through violence and cunning, which might help explain why her decision to take me in was tolerated amongst my kinsmen.
Still, how I managed to survive those initial few years defies all logic. Even barring my improbable adoption, there remains the fact that the human body, much less so that of a child's, was not designed to survive in such an environment. There was a menagerie of situations which should have resulted in my death: infection from wallowing in dirt and feces in the burrows, dehydration, malnutrition from consuming nothing but coyote milk and raw meat, disease and viruses exposed to an underdeveloped immune system, and the simple fact that I was a naked babe living in a frosted den amongst many other things.
My first memory was that of my mother. An ambitious and curious human infant crawled out of his warm-by-comparison den into the frozen world above to witness his mother returning from a hunt one full-mooned night. She held a snow hare in her mouth, and barred her fangs. Her visage was a fierce one; blood staining the fur around her maw, a weak snowfall coating her grey-white coat, holding her head to the sky and gazing down at me with fierce determination in her eyes. She growled in frustration, a low and methodical vocal reverberation, twitching her lips up and exposing her blood stained fangs. The blood gleamed in the moonlight, a pitch black pool with a shiny white overcoat.
That was how I knew my mother, from then on. For in a society where there are no names individuals are recognized by other means; scents, sights, actions, traits, and the sounds of the voice. My mother had no name, and yet that image was her name. The strong coyote bitch with bloody fangs reflecting humors in the moonlight. If I had to grant words to her person, then I suppose I knew her as Gleam Fang. Yet words themselves cannot describe the essence of what it meant to be Gleam Fang.
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I lived a fairly sheltered life until my mother deigned me worthy to begin training with the pack. I could not say how old I was, but I do know for a fact that she considered me a child until her third litter. She was extraordinarily intelligent for a beast of that nature, and very considerate of me and my limitations. While it is true that I did feed with her first litter, I never grew with them, never associated with them. The coyote can reach sexual maturity by the age of one, and as a human it must have seemed to my pack as though my development was uncannily slow. It still surprises me that Gleam Fang tolerated my infant self, clearly a parasite to the pack, even after her first litter had disbanded and began packs of their own.
By the time the second litter had been birthed or perished – as in the wild the mortality rate of coyote pups is very high – I was cognitive enough to at least interact with my fellow pups. I learned basic socialization and played with them for a time; though I was very fragile by their standards and more than once Gleam Fang had to lick the wounds I suffered due to overenthusiastic joviality. When they reached maturity a couple of them remained in the pack. They grew distant from me, as to be expected. I suppose by human standards one could consider them to be my aunts and uncles, or distant cousins of a sort. My presence in the pack was cementing, at least, with my mother still being my primary supporter.
It was clear that I was still both an anomaly and a burden, however, and many days spent resting in the den were wrought with disgruntlement from some of the older pack members. I found solace in my mother, when she was there, cuddling up against her for warmth, both emotional and physical. She was aware of my weaknesses, of my frail body, of my ineptitude, but regardless of how much strife I brought into her life she endured me. I only wish I knew how to reciprocate my appreciation, at the time, I wish I knew how much she suffered for my sake.
I was perhaps two or three years old when I first left the den with my litter, the third of Gleam Fang's. I remember that first sight, however, my brief and wondrous first step out into the real world. The snow came down gingerly on that mid-spring morning, Gleam Fang would train her pups in the day as opposed to night, and all about me were endless stretches of white flats and rolling knolls. Ice rose in sheets, like waves frozen in time, around a hole in the ground where water from the spring seeped through. My fellow whelps were frolicking in the snow, excited to toss up the powder and dig in the ice. I turned around and saw that the den was dug into the side of a relatively steep hill, where gray stones dotted the terrain and dirt could be seen beneath snowless patches. At my feet, in the dirt, was something I had never seen before; a peculiar green thing coming out of the earth. It fascinated me.
I did not last more than a couple minutes outside, as I recall, before the ice began thrashing my body. Walking on my feet and knuckles, akin to that of an ape – my attempt to emulate the mannerisms of my kin – I succumbed to frostbite very quickly. My mother, quick to react to my cries of pain, carefully scooped me up onto her back, knowing I was now too heavy to bite by the scruff of the neck without fear of puncture wounds, and tossed me back into the hole.
Gleam Fang would not have pressured me to leave the den, for some reason. She treated me with more concern than even her own pups; yet another thing about her that made no sense. I believe, had I not been so keenly interested in studying that green thing, that she would have resigned me to a life in the den, forever the subject of my pack's scorn. Yet as it was, in spite of my prior bad experiences, I continued to leave the den of my own volition. I came to learn my limitations, and would only stay out until I began to feel the familiar numbness of frostbite.
I would poke the green thing, I would smell it; once I even broke a piece of it off and ate it. For a while I thought I did something to make it angry; more and more of them started cropping up as the days went on. Everywhere there was bare soil they could be found. Then, when the weather became colder and the ice fell from the sky with more frequency and stayed longer, the little green things turned brown and eventually went away. My daily excursions to the mouth of the den helped to temper my body to the icy thralls of Ferossa, and while my growth rate was inferior to that of my kin, I was slowly but surely becoming worthy to learn how to become self-sufficient.
Gleam Fang acknowledged my ability to stay outside for more than an hour at a time. While I did not get to train with my brothers and sisters during their development, my mother was kind enough to take me out on quick outings. She would let me watch her and her partner hunt; I would leave the den at night with them and hide behind rocks while they tactfully routed hares and squirrels and various other little critters. It was an art, one that would require diligent practice and cooperation. There were no weak living creatures in Ferossa, and everything would fight for their life.
The next spring came about; a welcome change to the particularly harsh winter we had before. We lost almost half of our pack to dire weather and sparse hunting opportunities, and yet in spite of this my mother always made sure to prioritize feeding me to herself. When the green things started coming back and some dirt became visible under the snow Gleam Fang initiated me into the hunt. I would no longer be able to live off of her mercy.
My sister, who had lost her hunting partner, and one of my brothers, formed a team. I had virtually no experience, and the frozen earth still affected me significantly more than the others, so I was little more than a tag along for that first year. At best my kin positioned me over a rabbit den and used me to scare the prey out of their holes; I could make strange noises with my mouth that my kin could not. I was still weak. I could not move as fast as my kin, I could not weather the cold as well as they did, I was always sick but would not die, and I could not see as well in the dark. But I persevered.
Years passed; those green things came and went, the prey was at times bountiful and at times scarce. My body developed and my mettle tempered. I became increasingly accustomed to mortality. The average lifespan of a tundra coyote was approximately fifteen years, they are long lived by canine standards, but that does not include studies conducted in the natural environment, merely poor simulations. The primary killer of the tundra coyote is none other than the land which they inhabit itself. Be it the cold or the lack of food brought on from the cold; starvation, hypothermia, and cannibalism were all very common causes of death. It was my mother's bravado which prevented a weakling like me from succumbing to the latter.
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Gleam Fang was aging, but she still held our pack together with an indomitable thrall. I came to understand why, as I grew older, this was the case. My mother was a cut above the rest; a true rarity of the species. She was capable of physical feats unheard of, more intellectually inclined than the rest of the pack put together, and she was considerate of the welfare of the pack as a whole. It was her vision to see our pack rise beyond survival; to see us thrive!
This was why my presence was tolerated as an infant: Gleam Fang had earned the respect of the entire species through her displays of strength and cunning. Her domination was complete and thorough, and while she drew breath no one who had seen her in action would question her decisions. Of course, I had never seen her in action. Once or twice I bore witness to her assert her dominance over a fellow pack member, but these were trivial displays compared to the full breadth of her ability.
I respected her. Though I had not seen the extent of her power, I respected her compassion. I was a human in the world of a coyote, before I even knew what either of those things were. The canine would respect power, but the homo sapien would respect compassion as a facet of power. Her tenacity to bear me, the idol of pack animosity, was worthy of song.
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Age did not matter to a coyote. The condition of the body held some import, which itself is a derivative of age, but a numerical value or the prospect of planetary orbit meant nothing. I never thought to consider how old I was, or how old my pack was. My brothers and sisters were all birthing their first and second litters and I, the one who spent the most time in the den - which was becoming increasingly cramped - was assigned as caretaker to the pups when not on a hunt.
Still a child myself I felt stronger kinship with the newer generations. I would play and wrestle with the pups, teach them what little I knew about living as a coyote, and go train them with their respective parents. Gleam Fang would occasionally take me on hunts at night, having lost her hunting partner the winter prior. In terms of actual age I was probably only a year or two at most apart from the eldest in the pack, Gleam Fang's half-brother, but the condition of my body was that of a prepubescent child.
I was slowly but steadily becoming a more competent hunter and tactician. I was unable to reach the top speeds of my compatriots, nor was my endurance worthy of note, however as my body developed it became evident that my physical strength may be an asset to the pack in time. I had the ability to maneuver my body in ways which the others could not, and my hands and fingers could both be strength and a liability. Through wrestling for dominance it became clear to the pack that it might even be possible for me to tackle larger prey, with the aid of my hunting team.
This supposition was put to the test one winter when the smaller prey went into hibernation. My brother and sister lead me to one of the few watering holes near our den one night and we waited for the sun to rise, huddling together in a dugout for warmth. As the juvenile elk meandered towards the watering hole my brother and sister dispersed, flanking the creature, goading it in my direction. I rose to my feet as it neared me, and with haste leapt for its antlers.
A small boy of perhaps eight or nine was no match for the beast, but that damned pride as a human would not permit me to disappoint my kin. I grappled the beast and threw myself up onto its back. It bucked me to and fro, goring my shoulder once, but I held firm. Evidently I was able to hamper its movement just enough to permit my brother and sister time to tear at its ankles. The creature fell, rolling me off to the side with it. I was bleeding, but determined. I turned around, rising to all fours, and plunged after the beast which had fallen into a deep snowdrift. I sank my teeth into its throat time after time, my ears ringing form the dying cries, and my kin joined in as well.
In a mere moment the beast's life had extinguished, its blood trickling down my jaw. My heart palpitated vehemently, and I clenched my jaw to the epitome of rigidity. My brother let out a triumphant yip and my sister gorged herself on the fresh meat. I fell back into the snow, growing cold, and passed out. The last thing I remember was my brother's yelping as he called the pack to the fresh kill.
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I was a hunter from then on, a full grown adult in the eyes of the pack. I continued to mollify my senses. The sense of smell is particularly important to a coyote in Ferossa. When everything freezes in a matter of minutes, a keen olfactory ability is absolutely indispensible. When blood and viscera freeze it leaves little to no scent. As coyotes are not averted to the carrion-eater lifestyle, I came to rely heavily on my sense of smell for an easy meal.
One day, years after my first kill and my first scar, on a mid-summer's eve, I left the burrow with Gleam Fang for a quick scavenge. She had picked out the scent of something earlier that day, a foreign aroma. Why exactly she brought me I could not say, only that she was insistent on my sole attendance. Perhaps she knew… My mother was wise and considerate, intellectual and cunning, strong and swift; but even she is not without error.
We crossed over one of the larger hills to the west of the den. Seated in the frozen valley, behind the face of an enormous boulder, was a queer beast. It was conical in shape and appeared to have quills sticking out of its top. Before the massive creature was a frightening glow. Orange and yellow like the sun, this glowing orb of inconsistent shape sat atop the branches of a cedar tree, one of the massive green things that inhabited the island. Coming from the top of the glowing sphere was a plume of black which suffocated the air and made it difficult to breathe. The outlandish scent emanated from that ball.
Gleam Fang, unphased by these outlandish monsters, approached the beast, signaling that I follow. As I cautiously approached the things I felt warmth radiate from the glowing ball. I was frightened. This warmth was not natural, like the shared body heat of my kin, it was dry and violent. As the ball flickered and popped I jumped, cowering behind my mother.
She growled in agitation and nipped my shoulder. I straightened my posture and followed her lead. Something was off about the quilled beast. Upon closer examination it was not comprised of a single, universal coat. It was almost as if it wore the flesh of various beasts. It also did not move or respond to our presence, not even as we came within lunging distance of it. Was it dead…?
No…
At the time I was so terrified of the fire and the tent that I did not take the time to notice the sounds emanating from within it. When the woman appeared from the mouth of the tent I cried out in shock and fled the scene, followed by Gleam Fang.
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I was perplexed by the entire situation. What were those creatures? That one which emerged from the large conical beast almost looked like me…
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Dawn came. My mother had taken on a grim countenance ever since the incident; the both of us were unable to find sleep with the rest of the pack. I followed Gleam Fang out of the burrow early that morning. She sat at the top of the hill nearest our den and gazed off in the direction of the monsters.
I had never seen her eyes like that before. I can only describe it as melancholy; as if she knew what was to come. I crouched next to her, my cold feet sinking into the snow where she sat, and pressed my head to hers. It was a sign of affection shared between our pack. Her eyes caught mine and for the first time in my life I saw the age in her. Gleam Fang was an old bitch, and I not even a yearling in her eyes. She would not last many more winters, the wrinkles beneath her eyes and the white in her muzzle revealed to me.
I am not the type of man who deigns to live in the past... There is not logic behind dwelling on what has already transpired. Memories are used to help us plot the future, not regret the past. In spite of this mentality I cannot help but regret many things as I view the exploits of my history… I wish I knew then what I do now, The Way. I wish I could have spoken to her that time in more depth. Fate had other grand machinations, however, that cruel and disgusting construct.
She perked her triangular ears up and rounded on her haunches. Behind us half a dozen meters or so were two creatures like me: humans. One was the woman from the night before, pointing at me and facing the other, another woman. The other woman, stocky and gruff, dressed in tanned leathers and furs, raised a bow, arrow already notched.
Gleam Fang growled and raised her hackles, intercepting the line of sight between me and the hunters. She protected me to her last breath, which was a swift exhalation as she leaped into the air only to receive a heavy iron bolt to the heart. I leaped forward to catch her, and fell under her weight.
-----
Before she passed I saw an image in my head: a vision whose gravity I would not be able to comprehend until two to three hundred years later. I saw, in my mind, a young Gleam Fang come upon another strange beast like the one from the night before. She entered its mouth to find the corpses of seven or eight humans, blades in hand. Several of them had entire limbs missing; others were merely sliced to bits. Pieces of them were inside of a large iron skillet which was seated over a low tripod.
At the far end of the tent, wrapped up in a bed of furs, was a pale, fleshy human. It twitched and cried. The little one was fresh by comparison to the deceased, and the young Gleam Fang prepared to sink her teeth into it.
All of Gaea trembled, and the young coyote bitch was thrown back. Rising from the soil beneath the furs was a strange creature; a snake-like being with the torso of a woman and skin like obsidian. It slithered through the hard ground like a fish through water.
The creature, no taller than the coyote but twice as long, raised her hand to the bitch's head. The lamia, as I would come to know it later, disappeared following the contact. Something in Gleam Fang had changed. What information did Gaea impart to my mother? Had she, in that incarnation, known of my fate? Was I merely a tool to the Great Spirit?
My mother had been given her mission. She ate her fill of the decomposing cadavers inside the tent and then came back to me. She gingerly unwrapped the furs, very carefully lifted me by the scruff of the neck, and left for home…