Arcadia I

As a boy he was given nothing, and loved nothing, and aspired to nothing.

Dwlf was not their father, but had parented them both since leaving their birth-homes in the night. For one cold summer and one wet winter they hid under the skirt of a mountain, in a cloh between two of her legs, like pups confused by uncertain danger.

Other families came, but many left. There was always work to do, wood and fire and water and game to gather and tend and fetch and skin - and the ditch to dig, and dig, and dig; agone were days of idle boyish play, Dwlf taught them all the chores of men.

A cliroc stayed the winter, and made them to do obeisance to Gaerigania, the god of the mountain, but Dwlf did no rituals with them.

Amidash was the quicker and stronger of the two, and sometimes with Dwlf practiced spears. They had no forge for bronze, and trade was rare. A sickness of chills and sores took three of the families, and the cliroc, and bore a pock on Dwlf's left hand, but the boys were unblighted.

Rain and runoff rose in the ditch, and one night there were campfires in the mead below. Men argued in Dwlf's shanty. Dwlf took the boys and two other families, twelve of them all, and left before the Lady's blush.

The cloh had never bore a name. In his memory, it was the first of many places in a long journey.