Chapter iii

His never tied me up. Instead I was just left there, at first I was going to leave but then I thought 'to where?' So, I stayed.

I slept all night while the rain beat up against the hut. The weather was warm so it was bearable but the lean to where I laid offered little shelter from the storm.

Soon I found it early morning. The sun baked my face as I felt a dryness about my whole body. The man came out and gestured for me to come "Έλα." He repeated as he waved towards himself.

My movement was slow, it was not that I couldn't trust him rather, I was to depleted to move. Every step I took, took great effort. Caused great pain and drew a sadden look from the man.

The hut was as bear as it appeared the night before – less his wife and child. The two women looked at me with the same dumfounded look I gave them.

None the less they cared for me. Not for a day or a week but for more time than I could track, more moons than I would ever bother to count, more suns than I could remember.

The language was slow but after I had seen many hours pass, snow fall and fade, life freeze and melt, live and die I learned.

By the time, I could speak I could care for myself. The first summer I was simply happy to be alive. Every day I would awake to the hot sun slowly cooking me. The old man Anaximander would give me wine and bread before we would leave to go fishing. At first I pulled the net and only ever pulled the net. By the end of the summer they had given me a knife to start gutting the fish. In the evenings, we would eat the dried fish sometimes with fruit and often with a little bread.

This was my life all summer. By fall we could communicate freely. But the things I thought, the ideas I had; if there had even been words to express it the concepts seemed foreign.

Once I could speak properly I thanked Anaximander for all he had done. I gave him some grain and wool I collected through trades and explained how I would build my own shelter.

He and his wife laughed and pointed to a plot of land next to their own. It was there I built the start of my life.