I am here

Bengal slipped from his place. The foot of the young master’s bed was easily uncomfortable, but in the time he had been here, he had learned that there were worse places to be. Some of the other servants slept out in barns. He was lucky the young master had taken such a liking to him.

Or so he had been told, all the same. Bengal carefully opened the door, using his newly acquired skill of turning the knob, which until a few years earlier had been so unfamiliar to him. His kind, certainly, had never used any such things as these doors and knobs.

With trembling hands, he crept from the room and slowly closed the entrance behind him, making sure to keep his feet as light as the Simba that had roamed the plains of his homeland.

He had watched these majestic creatures hunt as a foolish young boy, and knew just how to position his feet, even on these hard, artificial floors, to prevent the sound from traveling.

In his hands was an object that until he had been bought, had been as unfamiliar to his owners as this new world was to him. A world of flesh that was pale instead of dark, cheeks that turned red in the sun, and homes made from rocks, instead of wood.

Bengal didn’t understand these people. If they were people, at all, he certainly had never seen the cruelty in any real man’s eyes that he had seen in the eyes of the man that had guided him unto the wooden block, and let others come to poke and prod at him as if he were cattle.

Bengal stopped, remembering that day, and the heat that had flushed his cheek, the weight of grief still settling on his heart. His eyes were drawn to a beam of light filtering the empty halls.

The floors were carpeted in red and gold, and this looked as if it were a king’s house, even if the master was gone all the time, at something the pale faces called: “The Revolutionary War.” They spoke this with great joy or great resentment, depending on the times, and some of the others had tried to explain to him that it was special to the white men and their masters.

All Bengal knew was that the moon that gave him light to see his way was once more back. I wonder, he thought idly. If you see the same moon as I do, Aziza. Or is the light of the moon forever barred to you?

It was not his way to question the goings on of the spiritual realm. Such things were not of his expertise, and the man who preached words of this foreign God had only tried to convince him to renounce his own faith, as if they were all that different.

So many things were, but he was not so much the ‘savage,’ as the others believed him to be. The Master, before he had gone to fight, had looked upon him contemplatively, as if he could see something that he knew intimately in Bengal’s chiseled features, but not without kindness.

Now he was only glared upon as if a shunned stranger, as if these dark ones here knew not that he was their brother, only darker, and that the clothes they wore were not the clothes they belonged in. That none of them belonged here in the first place.

Aziza would have understood. For now, the living remainder of the brave warrior, forever gone to the plains of good hunting above, crept stealthily through the house, feeling its emptiness acutely. He remembered a village, where he had never felt emptiness there.

Emptiness was something that had been found here. Adjusting once more to the dark, he closed his eyes and allowed the darkness to have him, detached from his body, mind hidden in a pocket where there was only warmth and smiles and dancing, things that seemed so constricted here.

“We shall drink to your good health, Akanni!” Aziza toasted, grinning broadly. In the forest’s light his teeth glowed with brilliant whiteness in the dark. A dark face, shadowed by the orange flames, dancing also in his eyes which were wide with good spirits.

Their sister, who was now an accomplished young woman, set to be married the next night, laughed and shook her head, her own face illuminated in the light. Naked arms, oil slicked legs cast shadows on the ground, which was soft beneath bare feet.

Densely, trees packed around this familiar scene, shielding the village from the outside influence of others. Hair was shining with golden dewdrops of sweat and the oils that they rubbed to keep the hair soft and flimsy on their heads.

The men leaned forward, sharing meat sticks, and the women weaved in and out of the separate bon fires, laughing and serving others.

The children sat in laps, watching as elders wove baskets or beating upon drums, creating the same uncontrolled sounds as the jungle around, and that was why none of the creatures of the darkness attacked or disturbed them this night, because they were all brothers in this place. The Sun shone on them with equal mercilessness, the plains dried and flooded at will, showing favoritism to none.

The cats ate and attacked whatever came close enough. The prey and deer ran when they strayed, and accepted when they could not get away. This cycle was not broken by man, or controlled by him.

He was a part of this cycle just as surely, and just as surely treated as brother by the laws of the wild. The air was cooling now, and was crisp with the smell of roasting meat.

The older men howled to the moon, as they had seen others, and chuckled to themselves like the hyenas of the plains.

From the trees monkey’s answered their shrieks, just as enthusiastically, and the three siblings, around their own campfire, celebrated the fact that the day after they would have another brother to add to the fireside.

Their father had been killed years earlier by one of the wild cats of the forest, and their mother had died of a sickness caused by mosquitoes. The three had grown up close, and were known throughout the village as the three that never left each other’s sides.

Akanni and Aziza were the other halves of their brother. They shared one soul, according to the village prophet. Akanni was excited for her marriage, to a good man who had earned the approval of her critical brothers.

She being the youngest, they had assuredly searched the allied villages until they found a male both worthy and strong, one who would protect their sister as if he were them himself.

“May you have many sons!”Added Ahanu, the middle born. “I must have one girl, I pray!” Akanni disagreed good-naturedly, over the shouts and drum beats of the others. “After all, I must have one child at home to care for! If I have boys, you will steal them!”

She said accusingly, shaking a finger at them. The brothers roared with gleeful laughter, knowing this was true. They were just as excited about being uncles as they were about becoming brother in laws.

“A girl is good,” Ahanu offered. “A girl means good meals. You cannot cook, sister, its a miracle we married you off before you killed us!” he teased, and received a quick swat to the knee for his opinions.

“Yes, and hopefully my new husband can hunt better than you two laggards! You cannot even shoot a nkanga!” she replied, referring to the small, easily frightened flightless birds of their breeding pens. “I shot one yesterday!” Aziza defended huffily.

“He was already dead, brother,” Ahanu pointed out, and enjoyed a brief wrestling match once more because of his big mouth. “You two mustn’t do this at my wedding and embarrass me!” Akanni scolded them as she pulled them away from the fire, breathless with laughter.

Her own comments spurred the three into a childish tickle fight that added their growing laughter to the laughing of the night around.

Bengal opened his eyes with a painful hiss, it hurt too much to remember those days a nights, but he knew he must or the memories would fade completely. His soul mates were gone now.

Walking slowly, as if the pain In his heart had expanded until it reached his feet and legs, Bengal staggered from the cold halls, so different from the humid climate he was used too, and staggered into one of the great living areas.

He had had been studying the way those that had been born in this strange land did things. The master had showed him how to do this when he first came, but he had paid no mind to it, having been still numb from shock.

That was when he was new to this unconceivable land, and was still aching inside. He still ached now, as he did on all nights when the memories tormented him.

Particularly this night. He was unsure of how he knew, but somehow he did, that this was the night that, years earlier, he had sat around the fire with his brother and sister and plotted how many sons and how many daughters she would have when she married.

Almost desperate for warmth of any kind, the sort of warmth that was impossible to find in a wooden floored abode such as this, he collapsed to his knees in front of the great hearth and stuck a few pieces of wood into the wide hole; gaping black hole. Light, warmth, he prayed, and hoped it might restore some warmth to a soul cold.

Striking the two black rocks together, he eased sparks from their depths, and the fire sprang to life in the bitter outlet. Bengal watched it, long lashes batting away the wetness he suddenly found as he stared into the growing flames. His life had begun with flames, had been bathed and developed in flames, and finally ended in flames.

He was like the shiny, hard pieces of metal that the masons made in their small, hot shops where he snuck whenever the young master didn’t need him. He quickly peered over his shoulder, looking for any signs of life, but none had heard him or awoken.

So cold, trembling with either physical cold or emotional ache is up to the reader to distinguish, Bengal wrapped his arms around the small keepsake he had made specifically with this night in mind.

Warmth, light, he named off in his mind, stepping back from the roaring blaze. He gazed down the deserted hall nervously another moment, hoping no one would hear or take offense. He had to do this.

So, stripping from the loose rags of clothing they gave him, until nothing was on his body but the skin of his birth, he slapped the meager amount of grease he had filched from the kitchen unto his breast and legs, arms and face until he glowed in the light of the fire, a bronze stature brought to life.

If any artist could have copied the grave expression of the statue as it stood helplessly before the fire, the small drum in hand, or the tears that dripped from cold, hard eyes, that artist would have caught the very heart of human sorrows, he would have caught a moment in time when a man’s soul was destroyed.

Bengal gulped, and sat cross-legged, singing quietly in the words of his ancestors. Softly, at first, he began to drum, lightly, letting his fingers merely graze the skin of cow that had been tanned and stretched over the wooden model.

“I am here,” he whispered, and the words echoed as a cadence throughout his battered and torn soul. The drum’s rhythm felt flat, sounded hollow in this lightless atmosphere, bounded from the walls and halls without life or love. There was none to spare the sound. The music had died, as surely as Ahanu had died.

“I am here, can you hear me?” he repeated, staring into the flames, willing them to take him home. Fire here looked much like the fire there; only this one was more unique. In the land across the sea, orange and reds hued the skies and plains. Browns, yellows and blacks were common.

This fire had been captured in the earth and sky back home. But in this realm, it seemed that water had been captured and personified into the land of the pale ones. Perhaps that is what the master had seen in his eyes then. He had seen another person out of place, for the master had, too, seemed very out of place in the giant house.

Entranced by the heat, brought to life by the light that seared behind his eyes, blinding him as the seconds ticked by, he was transported back home.

Aziza was oldest. He was not old enough to be a man yet, or even take the rituals. In a few years, he would be, then it would be Ahanu’s turn. They schemed to bring their sister with them, to train as one of the boys. She could shoot arrows like men and hunt too, they had taught her.

Besides, separation surely meant death. It had only been three nights since their mother had finally descended to the spirits, her soul taken on the wings of the birds. They had held a great funeral for her; she was well known throughout the villages near and far.

Many people had come, to wish her luck in the afterlife, traveling with their father. Tears had been wept, and heads had been patted in sympathy, but the only ones immune to the grief were the woman’s three children, now wards of the entire village.

Aziza’s face was stone; chiseled and carved into perfectly practiced detachment. Ahanu’s face was closed; behind shields of iron he had burrowed deep into his heart to survive the onslaught of senseless anguish.

Akanni stared at the gravesite almost curiously, with disbelief radiating off her in many waves that this woman could not possibly be her mother. At last, the songs had been sung and the ground covered with ceremonial dirt.

It was done then.

Silently, the three siblings wandered away, as did many of the adults, surrounding them with quiet, sad chatter. The children did not hear or see where it was they wandered off, too, guided only by the light of afternoon, and that they walked together, without even a hands breadth between them.

Then they were sitting forlornly within their small house. In the corner was their father’s bow. In another corner their mother’s cooking pots. They sat in the middle, between these keepsakes. Still silent, the grief too immense for speech, the world too narrow and dark for any contemplation of the light, Aziza took Ahanu’s hand, and Akanni’s hand.

A shock went through each of them, an electric tingle that left their hands and arms numb. Akanni began to beat the ground, hesitantly at first, with her small hands, as if punishing it for daring to take her mother into its own embrace.

As if she were fighting it for the life of a woman they all loved. A cloud of dust wafted up at each clap, then settled back around her already dark hand as she came down again. She was losing the fight.

Ahanu used his own hand to thump the ground, in a tender rhythm that had been beat out the night of their father’s funeral, when their mother had stood, as silent as they did now, and stared at his face as if she half expected him to sit up, and declare that he had only been sleeping.

Akanni created the tempo that had been beat out today, memory still fresh, a slow, mournful beat that hypnotized, and carried with it the weight of loss. Ahanu tapped his father’s drum beat, faster, as if they had tried to recreate the beating of a heart, a heart-wrenching reminder that the heart that had once beat strong, was now in a lion’s stomach.

The two sounds mingled together. It was then Aziza sang, softly. “We have a long way to go, but I hear you, I hear you,” he whispered, staring at the ground thoughtfully. These words were not traditional, nor had any of them ever heard them sung, but rather they seemed to grow from the ground like the forest, or appear from the air that they breathed.

“Can you hear the ancestors? They are with you. We are with you. I can hear you,” Ahanu straightened, feeling a pang in his heart, where he could hear, just dully, the sound of his heartbeat matching what he was drumming. His fingers twitched, but the throb did not break.

“We hear you,” he repeated. “Beyond the grave, we will be brave, because we hear you,” Akanni added. “Can you hear me? Mama, can you hear me? Baba, can you hear me?” tap, tap, tap.

“Can you hear me? Will you hear me when I call out to you tonight? I can hear you, in my heartbeat, in the drumbeat, of our ancestors,” tap, tap, tap…Tap.

“I can hear you,” Aziza finished, as the drumming slowly danced to an end, like the last remnants of the crackling cooking fires outside. None of them noticed that the moon had risen very high within the atmosphere.

It was a very long time before they fell asleep.

Now that same drumbeat danced within the small halls of a very far away place, as the middle born tapped to the beat of hearts long taken from him. Unaware of the tears flowing down his face, he continued to sing, barely hearing himself, paying no mind to the increasing speed of the drum of the way his shoulders rolled and his body trembled, wanting to dance, but paralyzed in place.

He watched only the light; that handled him and his siblings on so long ago, hoping that they could hear him, listening closely to see if even in this foreign land, he could hear them in the heartbeat of his ancestors.

He stared into the pictures of the fire, and saw his brother and sister, his souls, as they were lifted away.

The brothers arrived just the night Akanni was set to be married. Aziza and Ahanu joined the other warriors in greeting them to the village, and that night instead of a wedding they had a grand feast, pledging to one another friendship and brotherhood forever.

Ahanu watched the leader’s face closely, and saw in the laughing eyes and smiling lips a lurking slyness that made his belly clench. He did not like this brother, though they shared the same skin and land, he was new, and spoke of water in abundance.

It was rare that they saw water in more than a few tide pools or rivers; which quickly dried up. “I do not trust them,” he said to his brother, as they stepped away from the feasting for a moment. “Because they ruined our sister’s wedding?” Aziza teased.

“Where is Akanni?” Ahanu replied seriously. “Cooking, save our souls. What reason do you have not to trust him?” Aziza asked, but Ahanu had no answer. He only got a hold of his sister, and convinced her to sleep with him and Aziza tonight, in the bungalow they had shared since their parent’s death.

“You are not married yet,” he reminded her. “It would not be proper to sleep with your husband now. And besides, after this we will have to tear it down. One more night?” And she conceded, along with Aziza, for the fun of it.

Ahanu slept next to his spear, though for the next three nights the strangers did nothing but eat and sleep, enjoying the hospitality of the generous tribe. Then the fourth night they were woken by screams, and the sound that resembled thunder. Sweeping to their feet, Aziza and Ahanu raced from the safety of their house to see chaos had broken loose.

“Get to the forest!” Ahanu ordered his sister but she had already gone to help collect the children, leaving the men to defend against the silent infiltrators. Ahanu saw only blood, and heard sounds like thunder streaking through the air as suddenly others joined the fray.

Their skin was unlike any he had ever seen. They had pale complexions, white skin and eyes, too, that were pale and sometimes colorless in the low firelight. Their teeth gleamed with feral delight as they pointed their exploding sticks as any who passed them, and fired.

It was at the end of this exploding stick that Aziza charged, spear in hand, shrieking a fearsome war cry as he rushed forward, eyes ablaze with rage. Rage that they had been betrayed, rage that their generosity had been taken advantage of, rage that he had not been able to prevent it…

The spear went into the heart of the pale faced stranger at the same time as an electric shot jolted the air, and yielding the exploding stick was the leader of the visiting tribe. Ahanu gasped as his brother fell forward with a strangled gasp, landing on the chest of the dead stranger, eyes wide with shock.

Ahanu heard the sound of his own scream echo through the air as he ran forward, tackling the leader with all the ferocious rage of someone who had had his heart ripped from his chest.

He didn’t register anything in his fury, not even the bones snapping beneath his hands as they wrapped around the traitors neck. He did not understand the number of warriors falling or surrendering, the women being dragged away in chains, the children being rounded up like cattle.

He didn’t see, much less ac knowledge Akanni running up, as if from thin air, as if she had sensed their brother’s death, and land on her knees beside him, dragging Aziza from the pale man’s chest, shouting his name as her hands ran anxiously over his still body, desperate and anxious.

He saw nothing, until finally the man below him was too dead to even link his asphyxiated face with any semblances of life. Only then did he look up, shoulders slumped, breathing hard, his body awash with heat though his heart felt so cold it caused physical pain.

Akanni looked up at the same time as he, tears running unheeded down her face, yellow in the pale firelight, as if drops of gold were bleeding from her eyes, which were haunted and dull, without any of the former light. Her mouth hung slightly agape, as if she were now frozen in an expression of shock, and her fists were balled, trembling, whether in anger or anguish he could not tell.

She needed no words to tell him that his brother were dead. Indeed, with a barely audible sigh, Akanni fainted, landing atop their brother’s still form as if she were shielding him from harm, as if even in shock, her brain had attempted to do as she had always done for her brothers; take care of them.

Ahanu stared at her a second, wondering if she, too, had died. But before he could contemplate it, he felt a solid explosion of pain from the back of his cranium, and the world went dark.

Bengal could have thrown his head back and screamed at the anguished torment these memories caused. His soul would have vibrated with the sound of it, and for a moment he went silent, knowing that if he said a word more, he would break down into uncontrollable sobs.

Half of him wanted to turn away, and turn these thoughts to something better. Half of him wanted to forget the motherland, and all those who had dropped on her soil, but he dared not.

For if he did, then Ahanu died.

In the new prison he was in, it was hard to imagine that there were spirits who could hear him, or even that the spirits here were good ones. As a child, the smoldering flame inside of his heart had held hope, and been unquenchable in its fierce belief, but that flame had now been dimmed into translucent hopelessness.

What did it matter if they could hear him, and he them? They were gone, and this moon, which overlooked all places, and all peoples, had stood witness, warning them not of the men and their betrayal.

The Sun, so long worshipped by the people of the plains, had done nothing but watch and scold them in its unending mercilessness as they had been forced to trudge through the deserts, feet aching and mind wandering. Ahanu had not wanted to scream back then; his heart had been so full that it silenced all screams under the weight of loss…

The dirt flared, as the hairs atop a wild cat’s back flared when it hissed, when their feet trudged through the thin coating of dirt off the ground. Young men and women many children, all chained together at the necks and ankles and hands, slumped after the new monsters jerking them ahead. After almost five days of this, with little food or water, and almost no rest, they had ceased weeping.

Ahanu was too cold to weep, and shivered continuously, though the sun ahead shone down, making sweat pool in the dips of collarbone and neck. His only purpose, the reason why he had not yet wrapped the chains binding him across his neck, and pulled with a final yank, was because of Akanni.

They had learned early on, before even the first day ended, that stragglers were whipped into a steadier, faster pace, or were killed.Akanni was behind him, and every once in awhile, he would feel the chains hitch, as if caught on something, and see her stumble, eyes downcast.

Always, he would shoulder her, or stand before her when the whip came out, bearing the pain himself. They were not allowed to speak, any of them. Not even the mothers to their children or husbands to their wives.

The demons from another land just hurried them along the great fields of prairie and desert, across hundreds of miles, resting little, seeing nothing but the enveloping curtain of pain that had fallen over them all.

Each of them panted, as if they had been running for miles in the heat, instead of only shuffling along, mostly naked, prodded and pushed by the men as they leered closer and closer, pink faces pinched from the heat, pale hair dripping sweat as if they had never been near such extreme temperatures before.

At times, at night, they would hear the cackle of the hyena, they would see the glowing yellow eyes and hear the snarls of the lions as they came for them. Some of the others cried out, begging to be taken into death by their plain brothers before they were taken to wherever they were going by the pale ones.

In blind terror, their captors shot their exploding sticks at the predators, scattering them temporarily, for there was no escape from the animals of the plains. Ahanu watched the predators, took in the sights of the large elephants and the graceful gazelles, as if he were never to see such beauty again.,

In his soul, he mourned for his brother, in denial over his death. Aziza had always been strong. His brother was above death. Even when their parents had died, he had not been overly affected. Aziza had gone on; had become the protector and provider for the three siblings. Death could not touch him. It could not reach him.

Or them. Akanni was no ordinary woman. She was supposed to have been married. They were talking about her future children a few nights before. This wasn‘t happening.

But it is real, brother, I am dead. Aziza.

It is real, brother, I am lost, Akanni.

Now only I remain, the drum spoke, in a thousand voices. High pitched, or low, lyrical or droll. The voices of those in his village. His voice rose with the winds, mournful, and careened as the birds of his homeland.

The air rang with the echoes of all the screams that had been screamed on African soil, the drum beat the quivering rhythm of the hearts that had stopped beating during the passages from free to slave.

Bengal did not realize he was weeping. Weeping for his people, as well as his siblings, weeping for those that did not know the pain those before them had fathomed, wept for himself, and the scars that lined his back. Wept because he was no longer Ahanu, but Bengal. He wept because his identity had been ripped from him, and he had let them do it to keep himself alive.

The life he lived now was no life at all. He had not lived at all since Akanni had been tossed over the side of the ship, untangled from her chains, emaciated for she had refused to eat, refused to sleep, bruises and cuts lining her polished brown skin from where abuses had taken her nights, and rough handling had entered her bed.

Ahanu had not wept since that day, confined to his own lonely existence. Now he wept, the sounds of the drum reminded him of how her heart had once sounded, when they would cuddle close as children, back to back, tightly wrapped beneath a blanket.

Now she was gone. He had watched as they had lifted her lifeless body up and over the side, to the dorsal fins below. Blood had clouded the water then. Blood that also swam in his own veins.

The pain was excruciating, building to peak within his heart that stung with unbearable agony. Bengal felt the bones and muscles of his neck ache with their stretching as he threw his head back and howled like the coyotes howled when they came upon the burrow filled with dead young.

He howled as the women had howled when they were taken into the beds of the pale faces. He howled as the men had howled when suddenly the exploding sticks were pointed their way and they had fallen, injured or dying, howling.

He howled as the children had howled when they were forced to their knees and a hot stick of metal pushed into delicate flesh. He howled as his people had howled, and would howl, for decades more to come.

His eyes filled with fire, Bengal stared unwillingly into it, his hands cramping, his fingers raw from their dance across the tough leather, his wrists aching with the continuous movement.

“Can you hear me? My name is Ahanu. I am here,” he cried, in his native tongue, letting the words flow over his tongue as if cool water was finally pouring from his mind. He had ached to speak such words since arrival.

Suddenly, in the silence of his mind, through the fog of agony that had engulfed his soul, he heard a voice from the fire, as it reached out to him, brother to brother.

“My name is Aziza. I Hear you. I am here,” as the middle born watched, his brother’s face, from the dark eyes to the large ears and impish smile appeared in the flames The raw agony of seeing his brother once more and knowing that he could not be touched, made Bengal sob harder.

“My name is Akanni. I hear you. I am here,” then his sister's face came into the flames, smiling at him, her expressive, large eyes gentle and loving. Bengal felt as if his heart would tear. He leaned forward.

“I am here,” he whispered, in a strangled sob. Then, more voices join the fire, other faces, the faces of those from his village, and more. Those that had been tricked, deceived, lied to, or murdered. And even those that had done the deeds, and since evil begot evil, had the circle turned on them in the end. He heard the voices of the ones who were there.

“My name is Isubu. I hear you, brother. I am here,”

“My name is Mbele. I hear you, I am here,”

My name is Sofi. I hear you. I am here,”

“My name is Wiri. I hear you. I am here,”

The strength of all he had lost, all they had lost overwhelmed him. A single culture, thousands of lives, of families, of traditions and stories all wiped out in the span of decades, and more to come. The truth of it was enough to send Bengal into screaming as he saw the faces of those he loved, and knew that no matter what they said, they weren’t there.

Desperate now, he reached out. “Come to me! Aziza, Akanni, take me home!” he pleaded, paying no heed to the heat of the fire as it licked his fingers hungrily.

He could only see the faces of those he loved, and listened only to the screaming of his soul. His long, tendon strewn fingers fell flat on the drum, then roughly shoved it aside as he scrambled toward the roaring flames. His invention scrabbled across the room and bumped into a wall, empty and silenced.

Light, warmth, it was there. Behind him, his howls and songs had attracted attention. He did not notice the shadows coming down the empty halls towards him; did not hear the surprised gasps and see the faces as they turned away from his nakedness.

He did not care. He ignored the calls of “Bengal! Bengal!” Because it was not his name. His name was Ahanu. He was going home, to the fire.

The pain that blossomed into every pore and outlined every blood vessel melted into a symphony of more pain, so that all he knew was pain, just as the day when he had lost his family and his people.

A single moment of physical pain was nothing compared to a lifetimes of agony. He pushed onward, deeper into the fire, reaching for what was unattainable while he yet lived.

“Do you hear me? I am here!” All around, he heard the voices, could see their faces, could touch their skin…

Unconsciously he fought against hands pulling him away, did not hear his own strangled breaths of laughter, some might have called them hysterical sobs, as he scrambled at the burning wood, frantic to touch the faces.

His eyes burned in his skull, and his hair caught aflame. He didn’t feel it. He felt nothing, and escaped the fingers grasping at him, trying to keep him in his life of pain when he could have a death of freedom.

He chose death, and with doing so, chose freedom. The last thing he heard from the earthly world was whisper from an ethereal drum before he had exited it completely.

“Welcome home, brother. You are here.”