N

At first, there was silence.

Light didn't enter his eyes. Sound didn't reach his ears. Air rushed around him yet he felt nothing. For what felt like an eternity he was floating in nothing, simply waiting for someone to come save him.

Then, all at once, it came rushing back. The feeling of withered grass beneath on his back. The sound of footsteps and the smell of grassy plains. The taste of blood, a small remnant of what had occurred the last time he was conscious. As he crawled his way back to consciousness, he recognised that there were voices around him, circling him as if he was a wild animal. Eventually, they came into focus enough for him to hear, giving him his moderately normal human contact in nine hundred and twenty-four years. Not that he would know that, of course.

"Sister Yiv, there's a stranger here."

Nem's eyes fluttered open.