I cannot feel the sun at my back, but somehow I know the storm has passed and that I, however inconceivably, have made it out alive.

I am submerged beneath nearly a foot of smooth, silty beige, and I cannot move easily. My joints are irritated, and every part of me creaks like a machine that has never seen the business end of an oil can. I start with my fingers, aching as they are, and slowly worm my way out of this hole, feeling the outside for the first time, feeling the sand fall through the cracks of my hands.

Oh, I would write about it now, if only I wasn't struggling for breath beneath the weight of the desert.

Once my arms are liberated, I drag myself away from the pit, my legs still not fully able to respond to my commands. I flip onto my backside and look around, but see nothing. Good. It means Mare will never be able to find me. After all, not even I know where I am now.

∞

I have little way to measure time accurately besides lunar cycles now, but I never read much about those in all my boundless research. In fact, my endless reading and learning seems so far from endless now. It's still a struggle to survive, just as much as it was in those early, forgotten days, before I came across Mare or she came across me.

I had nearly starved to death in the desert when I saw the first tuft of life packed tightly between hundreds of miles of desert on both sides. I wept tears of pure joy as I felt its prickly fibres sting my hands, and though I would have given my left arm to eat it only a few minutes before, in that moment, I was unable to uproot and eat it. I left the plant where it was and continued walking across the death-encrusted plains.

Where there's life, there must be water and it was water for which I was searching. The occasional shrub or cactus began pointing the way, a map of flora placed in some divine notion to guide me to my home. The drawings had been useless, but the life never was.

The bushes eventually became trees, and sand gave way to grass. I almost spent the entire first day I saw it feeling the purple strands between my toes and laying on my belly to smell each and every blade. That night, I stretched my arms and legs through the clumps, savouring every glorious patch of nature before falling asleep beneath the beaming stars. I cannot remember ever sleeping so soundly, and I doubt that I ever will again.

After that it was only half a day to the river, and I've been following it down ever since. This morning I caught a fish for breakfast, not with my hands as I used to in the old days, but with a net of the plastic wrap I had used to distil water in the desert. The taste was purer and richer than any food that had ever passed my lips, and I didn't even need to cook it in a lemon garlic sauce.

I heard a sound yesterday, a muffled yelp and then a crunch. It might have been man hunting, squeezing his prey's neck with the raw power of brute strength. I will need to investigate. I feel I am closer. I feel I am nearly there.

∞

I recognize this riverbank. That much is entirely obvious to me. I can look down and see ever so clearly my impression in the grasses, trying to scoop up the wary fishes, just waiting for one to wander reluctantly into my palm.

I walk along a little further, into a narrower part of the river where the bank has been overgrown with trees to provide the fishermen and women with shade. I don't remember this exactly, but I suppose they could have grown while I was gone. It was a while, after all, a very long while.

I hear her first, only a slight swishing of the water, as if someone's dipped their fingers in just for a little taste, to test the warmth before diving in. I look in the sound's direction and there she is, the first of my kind I have seen since leaving so long ago. I want to scream with childish joy, but I know I'd just scare her away. I take out my pad of paper and choose to observe quietly, scratching my findings unseen in the shadows.

She's an undeniably filthy creature and little more than a miserable collection of long, thin bones over which has been dragged a furry and haggard-looking carpet of skin. Her hair has never seen the water I think, for it's clumped into a mouldy and putrefying heap on her head which seems like it has become an animal all to itself.

Her naked hide is laced with scars, although nothing close to those which Mare sported on hers, but they each seem to have a particularly nasty character to them. As she crouches over the water, the most defined is a slash that cuts along her entire left leg, a long, tendril-like patch of puffy white. It must have been a burn, for she'd never have been able to survive a slice along the leg like that. She would have bled out in a matter of minutes. Still, the wound must have been painful, perhaps the most excruciating thing in her entire life.

That might not be entirely true. A closer inspection reveals her hips to be somewhat wider than normal and the peculiar, although easily overlooked, patch of fat along her belly betrays hers to be a body only recently postpartum. This intrigues me, and I plan to study her further. I'd like to see whatever child-rearing rituals they might have, ones I must have forgotten being so young.

I see the father approach from her side of the river. There is a strength to him inherent in his build, but undermined substantially by his emaciated appearance and malnourished features. His skin has also seen a fair number of wounds, although they all seem to be the work of the horns of various beasts. The black hair that flows messily over his shoulders is much cleaner than the woman's, undoubtedly, but there are enough twigs, bald patches and oily lumps to give a professional coiffeur a diagnosed anxiety disorder.

The man strolls towards his partner, keeping his footsteps soft so that they cannot be heard at all before playfully tackling her to the ground. The woman feigns some reasonably convincing defences but is pressed flat by the superior strength of the father, whose eyes begin to burn in anticipation. I feel somewhat uncomfortable as he pushes her legs apart, but it's not like I haven't seen love-making before. It's something people do, so I decide it's probably something about which I might as well write. I keep my pen intently gliding across the paper.

Then the man pushes his partner's face to the side, and I can get a better look glimpse of her expression. Our eyes meet and instantly I feel that instinct that was so long so deeply repressed in me and I shy away. But I restrain myself and look again, and the woman's eyes have not moved. They're screaming at me, yelling in anguish as the man shoves her head further into the riverbank.

I'm confused. I don't understand what's going on around me. I feel as if I can feel the world spinning opposite to its axis and the contents of my lunch slowly rising from their perch within my stomach. It's then that I realize it. This isn't love-making at all. This is the other thing, the other vile, horrible, despicable, unforgivable thing.

I have to stop it. I throw my writing to the ground and throw my weight into rushing over the river when my feel my wrist caught in an ironclad grip, unable to move.

You can't.

It's Mare, her hand wrapped ever so tightly against mine, holding me fixed to my place.

I have to.

I fling my arm, trying to dislodge that impossibly solid grip. Mare doesn't move a single muscle.

You can't.

I try to kick and thrash and attack in any way I can, but Mare responds only by applying more pressure to my wrist, pulling my arm behind my back and thrusting me against the scales of the nearest tree. My face is crushed against the fibrous membrane, but I see still them out of the corner of my eye. I try to reason with her.

Why won't you let me help her?

It's my purpose, the only one I have left, and I've neglected it for far too long.

I struggle against her, but she only pushes me further into the tree

They don't understand what they're doing. You can't help them anyway.

I'm pleading with her now, my eyes stinging from contact with the scales.

They can learn can't they? Like you taught me. They can learn to be better, to not hurt each other, to live in peace and harmony.

Yes, they can learn. They can learn to make spears and hunt the animals to extinction. They can learn to make alliances and murder their enemies into surrender. They can learn industry and mine the planet to an early grave. They can learn many things.

It doesn't have to be that way.

The memories are flooding out of her now. I see bombs and nuclear winters, man-made famines and God-driven plagues. I see fires eating to the very core of the earth and carcasses piled into the highest corridors of space. I see clouds of dust consume cities and hear screams echo over empty mountaintops. I see water flatten civilizations and feel hatred of my neighbours. I see fans screaming at rival hockey teams and soldiers flinging missiles at rival nations. I see chaos and confusion and anarchy and rapine and pillage and murder and destruction. I see humanity as Mare wishes me to see it.

It does. Man was born to rape, steal and kill. All I can do is contain the damage.

But I would never do those things. I could never do those things. You've helped me become better than all of that.

The grip loosens.

I know.

I'm free.

I run toward the humans, ready to spill the craving for knowledge and civilization, the code of laws and morality, the marvels of science and discovery, the love for companionship and fraternity. I can see all the wonders of the world ahead, the endless possibilities at our doorstep.

I run towards the beautiful future and am stuck in the back by the undying past.

I turn my head and see Mare plunge the dagger deeper into my spine, pain coursing throughout my body. I fall to the ground, shock etched across every feature of my face. Mare stare emptily at blood-soaked hand, her body perfectly still and silent.

I'm so sorry. I'm so terribly sorry.

Mare turns her head, buries her face in her hand and cries infinite, moaning sobs of despair, and just as I feel the world about to slip away, the yellow-haired man appears to console her. He lovingly stands behind and wraps his arms around her. He looks directly into my eyes, smiling narcissistically as he does it and places a soft kiss onto Mare's neck. She swoons, half in a trance and half tied to this dreaded nightmare of reality, falling into a state of blissful torture.

They turn their backs on my bleeding corpse and the yellow-haired man helps her slowly make those first tentative steps away from me. And as my vision goes black, he takes one final look at me, readjusts his glasses and says in a voice that I understand perfectly:

"I really loved your book by the way. Truly original."