I saw something playing on the ground that appeared to be human. I crawled towards it and felt the ground break beneath me, the ground where this human sat. Wherever it moved the soil beneath its feet became fertile, spoiled with worms, insects, and centipedes that wriggled about. Then I got closer and saw that the human was a baby. She had the color of the mud, and she ate from the earth, nourishing her tiny belly with a fistful of dirt and worms. Then a lamb appeared, it looked lean and half dead. It moved past her in weakness, but she held the lamb by the heel before it got away. She did not know how brittle the lamb’s heel was, and it snapped. The lamb now stood on three legs. It tried to move forward but it couldn’t. She touched the lamb, more gently now and restored the broken heel. She sat with the lamb and fed it mud and worms. The lamb never left her sight. Then a snake slithered towards her. It rested just a few steps from her, blending in with the ground. It waited for the lamb to be fattened. Once the lamb had its fill the serpent approached and poised itself for a strike. But because the lamb had been colored by the mud, making it appear one with the baby, the snake accidentally struck the baby’s thigh instead of the lamb. Two deep gashes appeared on her side. But by tasting her blood the serpent’s fangs dissolved. It became toothless. She picked the snake up, coiling its string like body around her, and placed it next to the lamb. Her hands were over these creatures. She gave them the earth to eat.
Then a lion staggered along. It had not eaten in days. And when it saw the earth’s richness it envied the baby, the lamb, and the snake. The barrenness of the land made things hard. So for the lion, the appearance of the baby, the lamb, and the snake, was nature’s provision. It pounced on them and dug its teeth into their bodies. But their bodies were full of mud. The lion’s sharp teeth became blunt. And just like the serpent’s fangs, the lion no longer had need for its teeth. Once seeing that the lion would no longer be a threat, the baby made room for it. And it rested with them, enjoying the earth.
Now when the baby became a child, she was visited by a wolf. But the wolf was different from the other animals. The wolf had something in it that could be found in the child. The wolf had the spirit of a man. Unlike the other animals, the wolf had the ability to speak and sing. And it did not come to her like the other animals did – broken, hungry, and lost. The wolf came to her well fed and nourished. The wolf sang a song and spoke some words. But she did not understand it. She was mute, having had spoken no words ever. The child spoke in only one language – the mud. She took some rich soil and cupped it in her hands. She offered it to the wolf.
‘Humans don’t eat mud,’ said the wolf, with a voice that came from a forest of a thousand daemons.
But she didn’t understand this. She offered the wolf some more mud, with some worms in it.
‘Humans don’t eat mud,’ said the wolf once again. Then with its eyes pointed at her domesticated family, he said: ‘Humans eat that.’
Somehow she understood this. She understood this because the wolf’s breath smelled of decomposed bodies. It didn’t smell of the earth like her lamb, lion, and snake. She offered the wolf some mud again, hoping that this would take away its vicious teeth. But the wolf refused.
‘Beware the drought. Only then will you understand.’
Still the child did not understand. The wolf left.
The child returned to her animals. She had now grown into a young girl. Her animals had grown too. They had also multiplied. They began spreading, far beyond the boundaries of the fertile land. There was no longer room. And the more they multiplied the more the ground suffered. And her ability to produce was halted by the sheer number of creatures. Her mud dried out, resembling the land of the wolf. Things became desperate, and a strange appetite for blood grew in her. But she could not bring herself to eat her creatures. So she stretched out the little she had and offered it to everyone. One day she noticed that the numbers of her creatures had decreased. She rushed out to one of her animals. It had been lying in a pool of blood. Her lamb was half eaten by something, with its entrails sticking out. This drove her mad, and she went to confront the wolf. She presented the lamb to the wolf, demanding an explanation. The wolf laughed.
‘Beware the drought. I’m not the one who ate this lamb. It was your own, your lion.’ The wolf watched her face, waiting for a reaction, then continued:
‘To be fair, I did give them my spirit. They were desperate. The mud that once fed them has turned into stone. You are no longer their provider. You have become their source of pain. Your creatures will turn on you and eat you. They will tear you open, just like your precious lamb, from skin to flesh to bone and marrow. That is unless you eat them first...’
And right after these words the girl-child, the lion, the snake, the wolf, and the half-eaten lamb vanished. There was nothing left to be seen in the void.
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