For a reason

chapter one

The world was cold when I opened my eyes, distinctly unwelcoming, as if it wasn't happy to see me back. Back from where I had no idea. I screwed my eyes shut against the dull light from the sky and focused on where I had come from, for I had to have come from somewhere. People didn't just appear out of nowhere, fully grown. Or did they? I had no recollection of where people came from, just a vague feeling of wrongness about my current state, my mind couldn't remember much, and my body wasn't giving any clues.

Glancing around, I shivered, feeling like a fish out of water. The phrase had just sprung to my mind; did fishes usually stay in water? Was this how they felt when they got out of it? My environment wasn't very forthcoming about what was going on either, everything grey and monotone, yet it also seemed as displaced as I felt. The field around me was criss-crossed with deep ruts in the landscape, as if some giant had come along and scooped up the soil in their giant shovel. There was debris everywhere as well, bits of tough black stuff, leather? My mind supplied an image of oddly shaped things, much like what I was wearing on my feet at that moment.

I then registered what I seemed to be covered with; also wondering at the back of my mind if this was how I was going to live from now on. Only able to notice one thing at a time, like a child's mind, easily distracted, but also remembering only certain things from my past life, like what a shovel was, but not able to grasp why I had to wear the cloth that covered me. They were distinctly uncomfortable, and felt heavy on my recently awoken body. I was sure that standing up and walking would be impossible with these cleverly disguised weights attached to me. They were grey as well, matching with my surroundings, and they reminded me of the uniform one would wear in prison, perhaps I had recently escaped, and had had my mind wiped for some reason. But why was I in prison? And for the life of me I could not even recall what prison was; it was like my mind just went off on a tangent, sprouting all these foreign words, and when I tried to think of them individually, they no longer held any meaning.

Deciding that I definitely didn't like the cloths, I took them off, also pulling off the stiff things on my feet made of a substance called 'leather', and stood. I had been correct, it was easier to move without the heavy garments, but I couldn't shake a feeling of wrongness that had come with stripping bare. Perhaps that was not what the old me would do, but then, who was the old me?

I attempted to conjure up a name, any name, that I recognised. None came. A wisp of a memory played around on the fringe of my thoughts, sort of French sounding, but what was French? It began with an odd letter, maybe, V? I couldn't remember, just could see in my head an image of a young girl of about seven running around.

"Vue!" She had called, "Vue!"

Perhaps that was my name, though it felt strange, familiar, but strange, and I felt that my name had been longer. That it had once rolled off peoples tongues as they spoke to me, like a simplified form of music.

Abandoning my thoughts that would only ever lead to a dead end, I stood, and stumbling across the rutted meadow, I tried to get used to walking in my new state, but it seemed that my body had not yet reconnected with my mind properly, and my movements were jerky and uncoordinated. I constantly tripped, and couldn't seem to be able to walk in a straight line. My subconscious provided an image of a newly born lamb, tottering around on recently discovered legs, unused to supporting itself. That's what I was like, a lamb.

"Lamb," the word came out louder than expected, and the sound spoken aloud reminded me of what might have been my name. My voice also surprised me; I had a heavily accented tone, different from the clear cut voices I could hear in my memory, but much better sounding in my opinion. My tone was rich and thick, it felt familiar in a way that pleased me beyond all reason; maybe there was one thing that had survived that change from the old me to my current state.