When one is lost within a wood with no viable memory, no identity, one gains memory and identity perhaps more defining. The slate is, if not necessarily clean for one knows not what was written before that time, arguably blank nonetheless. The ground is fertile for newness, self discovery. It's the position of a clone, crawling wet and shivering from a broken vat and forging a path through shattered glass. Every new cut is an opportunity to shape the self even if the price is writ with blood.
A second shard came when I reached a bridge. It was crude, covered in moss and slime, and as I put a paw on the first plank of its far side it began to rain. The mist had cleared by then, and my only companion was a steadily deepening darkness. The day, it seemed, was dying, and soon night would be upon me.
Palms and oaks and Spanish Moss had much to say on the subject as they whispered in wind gusts and cast a maze of shifting shadows. Deep down I felt like I knew this place well, yet my consciousness couldn't place a claw on it. It was as alien as the surface of the moon. I curled my lip and searched the gloom.
As far as I could tell I was alone.
There was a second step, then a third and a fourth and before I could believe it I stood at the center of the bridge, black water and white froth rushing below the sodden, sagging arch in gurgling, swirling riptides and bubbling froth. It was deep, I judged, the currents cruel, and should I fall in it would carry me back to the beach, then to the sea. I sensed that it wanted to drown me.
There was an ominous creaking as I took another step and I was transfixed by an overbearing bolt of fear. I-
At the other end another one of my friends, a bear almost eight feet tall. In his paws was one of the biggest hammers I'd ever seen, the sort of sledge you used to drive railspikes into the earth. His gaze burned with hate and his snarl was murderous.
"You betrayed us all Walter," he growled, raising it high, the bridge creaking and shaking beneath his great weight. "How could you?"
I shook my head, taking an involuntary step back. The shell sawed into my hand, made me whimper with pain. It was glowing. "I don't understand," I said, shaking. "What did I do?"
"As if you don't know," the bear spat contemptously. "I trusted you, believed in you, yet in the end you sided with it instead of us. I hate you, fox. And now you'll pay."
"Wait I-"
He leapt forward and the head of the hammer filled my view. I stumbled back, just in time, heard the deadly whoosh that should have smashed my skull to ruin. I felt the bitter breeze of its passing as it just missed my cheek.
I fell on my back, panting and heart pounding, babbled something that amounted to 'you've made a mistake'.
The hammer crashed down like a thunderbolt, splintered several timbers just inches from my prone form. The bear roared in incoherent rage, raised his mallet up again and then-
Somehow I'd regained my poise. Somehow a knife had appeared in my paw. Somehow that blade was now buried in my friend's prone throat.
Somehow he died and I didn't, and I didn't even know why I had been forced to kill him.
As his corpse hit the rotten timbers and the sledgehammer slipped into the river my vision blurred and I realized I was crying. This couldn't be happening, wasn't. I had just wanted to go home, I'd done nothing wrong. Why were they hunting me?
The lightning flashed and-
The crossing was finished. Crickets sung their songs and birds were making their last calls and the rush of the water filled my ears. I sank to my knees in the moist grass of the banks, buried my claws in the dark and careless earth and...
Yes, I cried.
Would I ever understand?
Suddenly I came to the realization I'd let go of the shell. I felt a sense of horrific panic, searched frantically the tall grass, then found it. My heart stopped skipping beats.
"I have to hold on to it," I whispered to no one, not knowing why.