Shadows loom; giants walk the earth. He blinks, seeing without knowing his sight, hearing whilst ignorant to the silk of his own mother’s crooning. He knows not who she is—why she matters. A mother is nothing; blood is nothing to him. He scents her blood, laced in the clover underneath—but he knows not what clover is, why blood smells like it does. It’s metallic, but he doesn’t know metal.

Voices. They float above him, a language is spoken, and it’s all meaningless noise to him. He squeals—proudly, defiantly, casting his own stone. His chest clenches and breath becomes short; he closes his mouth. Screaming is hurtful to him, so he does not scream. He mustn’t scream…and so he has learned. His chest is weak, his passion is not: such is his first lesson.

Oh, how he burns. It’s all he knows. The boy burns black and red behind his eyes, clear eyes of steel that see the world without looking, eyes that gloss over the mulberry mare and ink-black stallion that stand near. They are meaningless, all meaningless. Shadows looming; giants walking the earth. What do they mean to him; what change do they impose on his burning body? His chest smolders; his eyes blaze; his teeth rend the air in fury. He hates.

His body is empty. Nature guides him. He must stand and receive her treasure, her nourishment; he tries and fails, his legs feeble and his chest tight. The burning erupts; the scream is imminent on his tongue. He suppresses it. Screaming does nothing but make his breath short, his chest ache again. The child is quiet, and he ponders. He tries once more to rise, and comes a little higher in his endeavors. He falls to the ground yet again, but the fury is tamed; he has theory now. He will do better next time.

Fires are born. They smolder in their pits of suffocating ash. They are tended by the boy; they grow as he learns, and he does learn. His body is fettered with silken ribbon; he is frustrated; he knows the one with whom he shared the womb-water, his brother, the boy of charcoal and ivory who slithered second from their mother’s body. The charcoal boy is not a thing to learn—he is, and ever shall be. He is the anchor of the world; he is the rock in the pit of flames that shall not burn.

Words are spoken, and they mean nothing. His mother’s laughter lilts in the air, birdsong and mist in the rain that falls, and it means nothing. The stallion of night rumbles like roiling thunder, and still the boy knows nothing—his body scorches and he does not know why, his chest refuses him his impulsive, natural desires. Yet the stallion christens him, and it is the stone that sends the ripple of understanding in his mind. He is given his title; he is given his crown.

He is Reginald.

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