The sweet aroma of the flowering field—I watch the stalks bending in the wind and feel the passing breeze—rolls over me in the summer morn. I’m washed by these wild perfumes as the young sun massages my sore body with his warm hands. I feel the caked up blood on my skin crack and fall away like dust.
What was it this time? I wonder. What did I kill in the night?
I hear the distant burbling of an unseen stream. It is far, just a whisper in my ears, but I am so thirsty. Trampling down the flowers, I seek these living waters.
Out of the light, I return to the darkness of the forest, wandering amid the pillars of these ancient woods. The music of the stream haunts my soul. My parched lips, my dried tongue, the beating rhythm in my burning head, demand water.
Ahead, I see the soft, enchanting sunlight filtered through the budding leaves of some forgotten grove. Ahead, the waters flow. Stumbling over twisted root and broken bough, again I find the light.
The living waters jump into the air like a fountain of man. The very atmosphere promises the sweet taste of this refreshing pool. A cool mist meets my face, and I shiver. At the fountain, I kneel; I cup my hands and drink from this stream. I shut my eyes and drink.
When I open them, my eyes are trained upon the water. The pool is deep, it is a well, and dark and beshadowed is my reflection below, the reflection of the thing I was last night. The image snarls and snaps at me.
For the first time I see it, see what I am under the moon.
I feel so dirty. I feel the blood still clinging to my skin.
Whose blood is it? I wonder.
I want to be clean, but I fear to touch the water now, now that I see that beast within it, snarling and snaping, waiting to grab me with its fangs and drag me down below.
Would that be so bad? The thought passes through my mind like thunder, a deafening silence its only answer.
I plunge into the well. The ice cold water steals the breath from my lungs. The water rushes up as I sink down, down, down into its frozen depths.
Gasping, my head comes flying up into the air, into the gentle grove, out of the water and into the sweet mists and golden sun. I crawl out of the pool and lay down upon the waiting bed of soft moss. I glance once more into the water and see, sinking out of sight, that beast.
The beast was dead. I was alive.
Tale Told 