STREAM AWAKENING

Lobo spent his first night on the post of his branding. And nothing was beautiful about life. Not the dirt, not the sky, not the dried blood on his burnt body.

Though it was a day without rain, the boy felt lost in a storm. A storm of emotions took over his mind.

“You’re a terrible liar.”
Luna’s blue eyes poked through darkness.
“I can tell from the way you speak the Divine Tongue.”

He looked for her until their eyes met. She looked like a creature in the night.
BLUE EYES GLOWING

“Why do you speak it?”

The boy’s head could barely stay up.
“I-,” he slurred, “I speak English.”

“Hmph!” A guard behind Luna set down a blanket for her to rest on in front of Lobo.
She sat her bottom down, one knee up and one pointing to the moon.

Both of her arms rested on her legs as she studied her new slave’s face.
“You talk back to me? Say nonsense?” She examined him, now.

“I don’t understand…” His head rushed with mist.

“You’re an idiot. I’m not even sure if you know the words you say. You speak the Divine Tongue of the Mother. Understand that?”

“Okay.”

“A slave like you is as worthless as a dog. You probably taste worse than a dog. I ought to dispose of you before you slow my banner.”

“I taste better.” He smiled through his pain before it rose up to make him rest again.

“Oh yeah?” Luna scanned Lobo’s face for any fear, or any reaction at all to her words. But he said nothing of value, and his face gave no clues as to his identity.

The slave was doing the same to her.

“I have secrets. I have skills.” At this, he felt certain. Luna’s face changed into one of interest. She was getting bored of Lobo over time, and he noticed now that her intention was to find something for him to do.

“Skills? Secrets? Tell me something real, slave.”

“Well-”

“Tell me your name.” BLUE EYES FLASHING

He struggled to come up with his own name. He knew his name from before. Or maybe he did not. She was looking bored again.

Luna struggled now, seemingly with a reason to keep the boy alive. “I don’t like to wait, boy. Tell me your name, or you can belong to the worms.”

It came to him like the end of a dream. He heard Her voice, just before he fell into a bright light. But the name scared him. No one of flesh had given him that name. When he thought of it, when he remembered it in his heart, he felt the fall again.

But he had to accept it. “Lobo.”

A grin appeared on Luna’s face. Her teeth bared in the moonlight, like those of a wolf.
“Lobo?”

“Yes.” His body began to sweat, from the stress he experienced when first saying it.

“You’re a pretty, pretty boy, Lobo. I wish whoever named you could see what you have become,” she said. Luna stopped staring at him, and got up to stand. “Take him down. Give him to the others for cleaning, then bring him to me. It’s nearly time for some sleep.”

The men under Luna’s command walked over to Lobo and untied him. He slumped entirely into the ground. His body was now caked in layers of dirt.

Everything was in pain. Everything was red and brown and black.

Again, in the distance, the boy could see the leader of these warriors walk away. This time, she did not look back.

<><><><><>

In the distance were lights. All this time, from the university-educated perspective of a 21st century human from Earth, Lobo was trying to learn more about his new surroundings.

“What technology does the world have?...
Who are the people that occupy it?...
Is it Earth, or is it some other place?...
Why have I been sent here?...”

These questions and more kept his mind in constant exercise.

When the other slaves took a look at the boy in front of the fire, they found nothing of note on him.

When they dunked him into the water, he could see nothing and hear nothing to convince him of his new existence. He felt alive when he was branded.

And he felt alive when Luna had said his name with a grin, “Lobo.”

When the other slaves introduced themselves, with guards watching from just beyond the shadows of the fire, the boy felt everything come into view.

Absolutely.

His golden eyes looked at every face and pair of eyes. They peered at hands and feet and elbows and knees. The clothing, the scraps of food on the ground. Grass and dirt and running stream waters behind it all.

Lobo remembered what it was like to live in a city of his past life. There was always too much to know, too much to explore.

When reaching Luna’s tent, he felt the rebirth finally settle into his bones.

This life is new.
That old life. The hills of Spain. Declarations of budding love. Breaths he spent laughing at the jokes of his kind mother. Aches he felt in the throat from fights with his father. Family holding hands, friends hitting each other with them in fists. Glass and steel and plastic and forms of captured power from the elements. Life with the world in your pocket, and a piece of it in your mind. Control. Freedom. Safety.

Nothing left to learn except oneself.
All of it. Gone.

COULD IT REALLY BE POSSIBLE TO BE BORN AGAIN…

His head poked through the entrance flap. In mild candlelight sat Luna in the center of a sea of fluffed pillows.

…AND TO COMMIT TO LIVING AGAIN? GOLDEN EYES WONDER
“Luna,” he whispered.