For the longest time, the darkness had been a constant in his life. He did not resent it. What was there to fear when you knew of nothing else? That place was free of ghosts and monsters, void of sadness or pain or regret. All he knew was contentment, safety and comfort; the darkness was warm and close, gently supporting his mindless form and providing all he could ever need of nutrition and shelter.  

He even had company.

Never would he ever recall at which point it became clear that they were two, not one and the same. By the time the safe haven began to contract around them however, he already knew and his first encounter with loneliness came as the other beside him was pushed away. Deprived of someone he had never thought to miss because the concept of separation had never been within his experience before, he strained anxiously within the pulsating chamber. Without the other the confined space no longer felt safe. Without his other half the added space was not freeing but terrifying, a void that needed to be filled in order to be whole.

He would never throughout the remainder of his life be able to define the source of that need. It was as basic and necessary as breathing, as natural as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

That sun was blinding as it struck his eyelids, and the ground he landed upon was hard, icy cold compared to the perfect warmth he had left behind. The sand was rough and foreign to his damp body and the wind that hit him full of impressions that bombarded his senses. Overwhelmed he squealed in fright, cried and thrashed and felt the other beside him again.

Byron!

His brothers name was the first word he learned in life. Before his own, before his mothers, before the sun or the moon or the land beneath his feet, it was the name around which his existence centered. As the warm, soothing tongue of their mother licked them clean Jude leaned into his brothers body, calming down enough to take in the world around them only as long as the contact between them remained unbroken. He watched the rise and fall of red dunes once the brightness of day grew familiar, observed the shifting waves of the sea when his mismatched gaze rose high enough to perceive what more there was to see.

He closed his eyes and listened to the earth as it sang to him, whispering hymns of life and death and rebirth. Everything was as it should. It was quiet and still, and he was content.