text: The world knows me not but I have come now to reveal myself. I am the harbinger of perfection. I have been chosen to announce HER coming. The world has changed since it was decided that I would be the one to guide her back. But the mechanics are the same, and I will abide. No, I *must* abide. We humans are but children caught in a tumultuous flood. We are swirling in an everlasting pool of chaos with neither handhold to grasp for momentarily relief nor precedent for the salvation of understanding. If we ponder any facet of existence long enough we shall see that there is no truth, no logic, no reality to anything at all. Our understanding is built by what is immediately presented to us and the moment is all we may live by. My moment has, and forever will be, red. In the beginning there was only I. I stayed close to the trees for dangerous creatures lurked in the dark. In the trees I was safe from harm. I could avoid their sharp claws and teeth. I could take refuge from the night. In the day I was free. The things that would hunt for me would flow back into their hiding places as the tide does when the moon has set and the sun rises. I was always alone. Pawing at the soft damp earth for hard bitter roots. Picking through ferns in search of berries bursting with juice. The world held many dangers, but it also provided in proportion to necessity. Looking back it is apparent that this was a time of simplicity in comparison to the modern world today. I was living based upon the singular purpose of survival. Any happiness or unhappiness I felt was purely visceral. If I found sustenance I would leap and whoop loudly in ecstasy, and if I went hungry I would moan and sob as pangs of starvation wracked my body without mercy. I was content in this way of life for I knew naught of any other. Until she revealed herself to me. She came as a vision during the deepest hour of darkness. There was no moon to light the trees and I was resting up in the shelter of the forest’s canopy. Though my eyes were closed I saw a glowing silver light dance before me. I had only seen the moon shine in my dreams with such beauty and I was dazzled by it. I opened my eyes and the light was gone. The night was impenetrably dark. When I closed my eyes once more the light was gone. For many days I thought of the light. It had been but a flicker amidst the darkness but it enticed within me a curiosity and longing that I had not known before. I had felt want many times when searching for sustenance, but this was a different want. It was a want based not in need but in something unknown. In the coming days as I foraged and slept I was no longer blithely living as I had. My thoughts were consumed for want of the light. Oh how beautiful it had been. How I longed for it. And it came again soon. As the first time it came when I was resting in the branches of the trees. Once more I saw it with my eyes closed. It came so softly that I did not perceive it at first. It revealed itself so gently that I had been unaware of it until it became so bright it could not be ignored. There it hovered in the bottomless darkness behind my closed eyes. I kept my eyes closed this time for fear that it would vanish once more. I watched as it glowed brightly and I was filled with sensations of wonder and contentment. I felt as if I had eaten my fill for the entirety of my life, that I had slept until I no longer needed sleep, that everything that may do me harm had vanished into nothingness for all time. I stayed there staring with eyes closed into its warmth and felt embraced and at peace. Until it began to move away. In panic I open my eyes, and quickly closed them again for fear that it would vanish once more. I saw that it was still moving away. I could not let it leave me. It was the only thing that had ever made me feel this way. I could not lose it again. So I followed it. It seemed to lead me down, and with eyes shut tight, I climbed down with it. I was adept at climbing the trees as I had lived among them my entire life. I had climbed up and down many times in utter darkness so I was familiar with moving without sight. As I touched down to the soft grass of the forest’s floor I felt no trepidation although I was unprotected in the night. I only felt excitement as I pursued the light. There was only the soft sounds of my footsteps through the forest. I did feel a kind of nervousness because the forest was usually filled with the sound of chirping insects and moving creatures at night. It was unusual for there to be complete silence. But I did not heed my trepidation as I followed the light. It was constantly moving, weaving its way through the endless darkness behind my closed eyes. I do not know how long I followed the light but I knew I had ventured further than I had ever dared to before. The ground beneath me felt different. The earth was packed harder and I stumbled a few times in this unfamiliar terrain. The light led me further and further into strange territory and I felt greatly displaced and disoriented as I kept my eyes tightly closed and followed it. The air began to feel different, almost wet. My footsteps reverberated with a strange echo I had never heard before. I continued on in this way for a long while until the light stopped suddenly. I became aware of a strange sound close by. It sounded wet and squelching. The light suddenly blinked out and I opened my eyes. I could not comprehend what I was seeing at first because my eyes were blurred from being shut for so long. As my eyes adjusted I realized I was not in complete darkness. There was a glow emanating from behind me and illuminating what was directly in front of me. My vision was filled with a singular sight. All I saw was red. I took a step back and almost stumbled. I realized that I was staring at a wall and I saw that the red ended in smeared edges at the periphery of my vision. It smelled just like the creatures of the night when they tore one another open and I knew I was in a dangerous place. My breathing quickened but I stayed quiet for I knew to become one with the darkness when there were hunters nearby. I slowly turned around. I was not prepared for the horror that lay before me. The light I had followed hung overhead. It was smaller and duller than the vision I had followed but it glowed with the same soothing shine that I had seen. However, what it shone upon was far from soothing. Dismembered bodies lay everywhere. I do not know how many poor souls were there in that place, but it seemed countless. Stacks of torn apart torsos, a large pile of arms and legs. And then there were the heads. The heads were lined up against the opposite wall in a neat line along its bottom. Their eyes had been torn out of their sockets and placed neatly on top of the heads with their cords still attached. They resembled the antennae of insects I had seen crawling along the ground or on the bark of trees. The line stretched out a far way on both sides and I knew it was too many to count. They were in varying states of decay but some looked as if they had been set there that day. And in the center of the carnage and directly underneath the light was the hunter. She was enormous. Even sitting on the floor she was twice as large as I was. Her brow was heavier set than mine and her hairy knuckles bulged from her hands. Her bottom lip jutted out as she picked at an oozing pile of entrails before her. She lifted up an intestine and her huge flat nose twitched as she sniffed at it. She let out a sharp guffaw and sank her teeth into it. I saw that she had three rows of razor sharp teeth. I sank down slowly into the corner where the wall met the floor onto my hands and feet. I was adept at crawling around on just my toes and fingertips and I could move noiselessly like this. I opened my mouth and breathed slowly to minimize any noise. I began to slink away in the direction I felt I had walked. I crawled and crawled my fingertips sinking into the coagulated blood that coated the floor. Past viscera and carnage I saw bodies pinned down by heavy stones. Some looked more whole than others. I did not look closely at them but maneuvered my way slowly past them. As I reached the edge of the bodies I saw a faint light ahead of me and I realized that it was the entrance to this place. I had never been in a cave before but I realized that this opening was my way out. I made a more direct line towards it. There was a body lying face-up. Its arms and legs had been torn off and its insides were spilling out. It looked incredibly fresh and I had to keep myself from retching as I stepped over it. My arm brushed its face as I squeezed between it and the wall and its eyes suddenly sprang open. I reeled back in shock as I realized this poor man was still alive. Then he started screaming. Blood and vomit gurgled in his howls and even under the heavy stone his torso twitched and bucked enough to displace it. It rolled off of him with a loud crash and he began writhing wildly. As he writhed his entrails spilled out further and blood spouted out from him. My head immediately turned back towards the hunter and I was full of fear and despair. The hunter was staring right at me with the intestine hanging out of her mouth. I jumped to my feet and sprinted towards the opening. I did not look back as I heard the intestine drop. A hunter roars after a successful hunt and its cries will pierce the night along with the scent of viscera. But, they are quiet before they make their kills. I did not hear her give chase but I knew she was coming. I burst out of the cave and into the night. I saw that the strange terrain I had felt was the hard earth of a clearing that led to the cave. There was only a short distance to a line of trees. I immediately ran towards them. Hunters had no hope of keeping up with me once I reached the trees. They could not climb because of their lumbering size. I was lightweight and could leap from branch to branch and escape them easily. If I could only make it to the trees I would be safe. I ran with all my might under the light of the moon that was barely showing itself from behind a layer of clouds. My chest roared in agony and my breath came ragged and frantic. My feet slammed against the hard earth and my arms swung wildly. My heart pounded and the wind rushed in my ears. The trees were close. They were right in front of me. I was so close I could touch them. I was going to make it. I HAD to make it. I felt relief and victory as I came to the nearest tree. I was almost there. Then she caught ahold of me. I actually did make it. I had leapt up and set a foot and a hand on the trunk of the nearest tree and I would have clambered up with ease in less than a second if she hadn’t been right behind me. The hunter had moved much much much faster and quieter than I had. I had hoped she was still in the cave. That is why the hunters ruled the forest’s floor in the night. I had no chance. She yanked me off the tree by my leg and swung me around. The world blurred and broke into a million pieces as she pirouetted and shattered me against the tree’s trunk. I knew I was dead as I felt my insides crack and burst and I saw blood immediately gush out of newly formed holes in me. I could not cry out for all the air inside me was gone and I hung limply in her grip as she held me up in the full brightness of the moon’s light that had come out from behind the clouds. The moon gazed down upon us with neither tender mercy nor vindictive cruelty. It simply watched as the hunter fulfilled her natural tendencies unto her prey. She seized one of my arms in her giant hand and, with a grunt, tore it from my body with ease. Like plucking a leaf from a tree. That’s when I screamed. But my scream was only momentary as I gurgled and coughed up blood and vomit spewed out of my mouth. She dropped me and I lay there a broken, bleeding, and dying heap as I watched her lift my arm up to her gaping maw and take a large bite from it. As she chewed she guffawed and inhaled heavily, then she let out a loud bellow to announce her victory to the forest. The leaves in the trees around us shook and I heard their rustling all around. Then everything was quiet and there was only the sound of us. My dying breaths coming out labored and ragged intermingled with my choking on vomit and blood, and her quiet grunts and slowly deliberate and wet chewing. Occasionally she would let out a quiet satisfied moan and I could hear her teeth scrape against the bone. I could not move my head and turn away so I watched as she ate my arm. My vision turned red and I blinked several times as blood spilled from my broken skull into my eyes. Everything was blurred and the corners of my vision were darkening. I knew when she was finished with my arm she would tear another piece from me. She would keep going until she was satisfied and then she would take me into the cave and weigh me down with a heavy rock. I was full of despair and was wishing to die quickly so I would not be like the screaming torso that had alerted her to my presence. Blood was leaking out from my face and I could see a pool forming on the earth in front of me. That’s when my blood came alive. It seemed to rise up as it gathered itself and formed itself into a perfect sphere about the size of one of the hunter’s fists. Two thin tendril-like appendages shot out from either side of the sphere and they ended with an extremity that looked like a fingerless hand equipped with a flat thumb. It seemed as if its extremities were good for mobility and gripping but not for actual grabbing. The sphere stayed still for a brief moment then twitched and began moving its appendages wildly as it scrabbled quickly towards the hunter. She did not notice as it climbed onto her foot and up her leg. She took another bite from my arm as it moved its way up her torso. Then she saw it. She immediately dropped my arm and roared and swatted wildly at the blood creature. It evaded her swipes and climbed up past her flapping breasts, up her throbbing neck, and onto her face. She began bellowing as it latched onto her right eye and she clawed wildly at it to no avail. It used one of its appendages and as easily as she had torn my arm off it plucked her eye out of its socket. Her bellows became higher pitched and agonized. The blood creature shoved itself against the gaping socket and let the eye fall. The eye swung from her face with its cord attached and the hunter started slapping her face in a crazed and frenzied attempt to squash the blood creature. It took no heed as it pressed itself into the socket and slowly oozed in. I watched it disappear completely into her head. She fell to her knees directly in front of me and stopped struggling. Her arms dropped limply to her sides and her mouth hung open. Her face bulged and was full of pulsating veins as a teardrop of thick blood leaked down her cheek from the empty eye socket. It grew into a torrent. Blood gushed out of her eye suddenly like a forceful flood spraying into the night air and onto my already bloody face. I watched as it increased in pressure and her other eye popped out and blood spewed from both sockets. The blood kept coming and coming and her face cracked from the forehead down to the chin. A red line quickly seeped blood and then her face split completely open and intestines and entrails spilled out from her face. She fell back and began flailing in throes of anguished death as her insides continued to pour out from her face. It seemed her entire insides spilled out and lay as a heap on where her face used to be. When they finally stopped coming out she was still. Everything was quiet as the hunter and her steaming piles of organs lay there. Then SHE came. The perfect one. The hunter’s torso cracked and split open and, like an exquisite bird hatches, she rose up from the hunter’s desecration. She was as tall as the hunter but infinitely more elegant. Where the hunter had been knotted callouses and thick bones she was dainty curves and toned muscles. Her skin glowed with the same beauty as the light I had seen behind my closed eyes. The light of the moon I had seen in my dreams. The light of hope and comfort and safety. And I knew her name was Puricite. She turned to me and knelt down next to me and even through the filter of blood’s red I saw her face full of compassion and mercy. She cradled my broken body in her hands and lifted me up with ease. She rocked me as a mother rocks her child and I felt I was in the uppermost branches of the tallest tree riding a rustling wind of pure night. My breathing became less labored and I felt a hot searing sensation where my arm had been torn off. My insides creaked as my bones and organs stitched themselves back together. She gently placed me back down and I stood up. I saw that my arm was returned. It is by her grace that I am alive and have continued to live. Whenever I am dying she will cradle me and return me to a state of health. I have lived and served her for eons because of her ability to heal me. It is only the blood in my eyes that has never gone away. And the world was, is, and always will be red. She took me by the hand and led me through the forest. There were no hunters that approached us for the death cries of a hunter cause all the creatures of the forest to flee in fear. For what may slay a hunter is something unknown and a far greater danger than anything else. She led me a far way. To a place I did not know. The night faded away into bright day as we walked and walked until we reached the edge of the forest. We looked out from its edge and she gestured for me to look and I saw many more people like me moving in the light of the sun. I saw hunters too. The ones like me and the hunters were together. There were many of them. They had cut down trees and had shaped them into shelters. They were moving piles of food into an open flame and moving the food into containers. They were hanging furs and sitting together. There were children of both people and hunters frolicking and squealing in joy. As I stared in wonder and incomprehension I felt her grip my arm strongly. I whimpered in pain and turned to her and I saw her staring into my face. Her eyes were open far wider than any creature’s I had seen before. Her mouth was open in a smile that stretched to both sides of her face and I could see the seemingly endless rows of razor-sharp teeth that filled her mouth. She gripped my arm tighter and tighter and I looked down and saw that her nails had dug into my flesh. As pinpricks of blood began to leak out her beautiful glowing silver skin took on a darker crimson hue that matched my blood.