AHURA stood by the edge of the lake, naked and exposed. Entranced by the waves, rocking back and forth across the rocky shore.

Silent and lost in reverie, he watched the collage of vivid purples and burning oranges that composed the sunset sky.

The forest suddenly seemed alive to Ahura, unnaturally so.

A moment ago, what seemed like grass and plants, seemed to Ahura like living tendrils reaching out from a world beneath the earth. The sky beautiful and orange, seemed darkened in a blood red hue.

And the water, glassy and still, seemed to pause for a moment.

And there, beneath the water, he saw it moving, orange slit eyes gazing up at him from beneath.

A creature, or an amalgamation of his overactive imagination, Ahura was uncertain so he watched it writhing beneath the surface.

It's form was an unfathomable mass of scales and tentacles, its eyes orange globes gazing back at him.

Ahura blinked and the beast was gone.

The blood red sky, was gone, leaving behind the beautiful burning sunset.

Ahura found himself gazing into the water, staring at what took him a half second to realize was his reflection.

Ahura was big and muscular. A large man - boy only entering his early twenties, but he was at least six feet and two inches tall.

His face was striking, not in a beautiful kind of way, but rather the four thin slits on the left side of his head seemed to gain a lot of attention. Four scars, that reached from the back of his skull above his ears and reaching the edges of his face.

The scars appeared like the remnants of a claw marks, that gruesomely grazed the sides of his head.

And then there where his eyes. Two mismatched colours of orange on his left eye, and green in the right.

Ahura could not remember why he was standing here. Or why he suddenly felt cold.

As his mind begun to work that puzzle, he noticed an irritation at the edge of his consciousnesses.

Noise.

Ahura tried to ignore the noise, but it persisted. Then Ahura realized that it wasn't simply noise. They were words.

"Ahura, what the hell!!" A voice called out.

Ahura noticed the cellphone in his right hand. It was on, a number was dialled someone was on the other side.

Curious, AHura thought to himself as he Raised the phone to his face,

"Dem?" Ahura asked curiously.

"No shit." They responded frustratedly. "How did you find yourself in the middle of Slave lake?"

Ahura paused for a moment as he often did.

Every word he spoke was often slow but carefully chosen. "... There was a man."

Most people in his life had struggled to put up with Ahura, few had the patience for his nonchalant mannerisms, and fewer could tolerate his episodes.

But most people were not Demi.

Ahura couldn't remember the reason he was at the shore of the lake, naked. But amnesia was a symptom of his episodes.

"You are lucky I'm pretty awesome, and happen to have nothing to do but drive 3 hours out of town!" Dem spoke with their usual flair for the dramatic. But then they went silent for a moment.

"....Hey," Dem said softly. "I know... I'm just concerned, I will be there in a few hours... keep warm. Um, Meryl says you are a dumbass."

Ahura stood there for a moment longer, naked and alone in the middle of a forest.

Despite all the places he found himself over the past two years, despite his forgetfulness and often dramatic misadventures or the visions his episodes guided him to - Dem and Meryl always knew how to find him and bring him home again.

Over the years, the family had grown tired of Ahura, over the years the sympathy people once had for his condition had turned to apathy... but despite it all, Meryl and Dem stayed with Ahura. They were all he had in this life, in fact until he had met them, Ahura was uncertain if he ever truly had anything.

Over the past month, Ahura's episodes had increased, they had become more vivid, more real and threatened to consume him. Terrible manifestations of horrific sights and sounds lingered on with Ahura, even into his waking hours. Torrents of screams and voices, beyond the ever present tormentors who constantly reminded him of his failures and inflicted him with regrets. Sometimes Ahura could hear whisperers who whispered secrets into Ahura's soul. Sometimes, Ahura knew things that he shouldn't, things he could not say to his psychologists and councillors because the secrets Ahura was told, were about them.

When AHura was at the brink of losing his mind. Dem and Meryl would always be there. Ahura owed them everything. The thought of his friends soon arrival brought warmth to Ahura's heart.

Smiling to himself, as the warm feeling settled within him, Ahura took a seat by a tree, and lost himself to his ever vivid imaginations.

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A low fire burnt in a small clearing between the trees. An unexpectedly nice spot to set up camp along the lake shore. The sun had set now, and the sky was black and beautiful. Out here away from