The rattling of your bones awakens something like consciousness. You lie in the earth about an open slab sarcophagus. You claw a stained bony hand free from the soil and reach for your face, a raw skull covered in dirt and petrified leaves. You attempt to cry out, but there is only the clacking of old bones. The knowledge of your life before and your apparent demise fails to manifest, even your name is an empty echo.
You see, eyeless, a glade long untouched by civilization around you. The sound of autumn winds trapped beneath the trees brushes through your mind. You feel nothing; only immense hunger and the empty cold of undeath. Fallen bodies surround the mound. They lay still and dead as you were, intertwined with tattered cloaks and rusted daggers.
Some unnatural force awakened you, but it sits on the edge of your reasoning. You feel it is connected to what's on your left wrist. There is a heavily tinged silver bangle, fastened with some energy that feels part of your skeleton. Irremovable. When you look at the bangle the cacophony of a hundred voices fight to dominate your mind. One prevails and hoists your stripped bones from the tomb...
The movement is slow. Heavy. With deliberate force I sink the bones of my feet into the soil; metatarsals, phalanges, disappearing beneath the dirt before I again lift them away from it. I take another step. I dig into the earth with my bone and I move on. I take another step. I prove to myself that no prison of mud can hold me now. My body shakes and crackles with mirth, resentful mirth for being trapped in the first place. The bangle clinks against my wrist and produces a most curious noise.
Air moves through the nest of my ribs, and the gaps between my teeth. I open my mouth, letting the jaw hang open wide as I shamble on. I can taste it. I can taste it. The sour flavor of death, rotting leaves covering up corpses. A taste of magicks. Beyond that, something sweeter. Ahead somewhere. I seek it out.
Passing through the glade is arduous. The terrain is unfamiliar. These bones, I think, are not mine. I would know my own bones. I would have to know. The skull shifts from side to side with every step, the jaw still limp and hanging. There is nothing inside this cranium, except my mind somehow. Swirling. So the bones are mine now, I have taken them. Distantly, I wonder what could have happened. Where is my body, and where is my crown?
I think the body is not so important as the crown.
I step over one of the fallen people. With deliberate force I sink the bones of my feet into the flesh; calcaneus, tarsels, disappearing beneath the skin and squelching, coming away red. I take another step. I move on. I spare no thought to any skeleton besides the one that is now mine. If I focus on anything else I may lose the grip I have on this body. My mind may fly from it's eye sockets and disappear. I give nothing away, not even a glance. I never have.
I can taste it. I stumble into the treeline. The shovels of my feet eventually grow weak... no, no, not that they have grown weak. Not that the dirt has hardened beneath them, packed with plant roots and stones. The earth itself has rejected me, I have won and I am decidedly free. I raise my arms as I walk, faster now. The bangle clinks against my wrist and produces a most curious noise. Besides it's rhythmic, primitive music there is no sound in the forest. If there was anything at all alive, it cowers from me. Even the trees fear and grow still, refusing to drop their leaves as I pass under them. Even the grass leans away from my every step. This is natural, and as it should be. Even dead I command respected, and am respected. Even dead... Even dead...?
I live. I will live. I am a skeleton now but I am alive. Surely I am alive. Surely my thoughts now, my movement now prove I am living, thinking. Not breathing, not yet, but I can still taste the air when it blows around me. I taste that sweet something, ahead. I seek it out.
There is something bright shimmering in my view, peeking into the forest between the tree trunks. I hear something, joining the chorus of the bangle's tink tink. It calls to me. Sings, a steady gurgling that rushes from my head through my marrow. I run, and I join the chorus now too, my jaw bouncing and teeth snapping violently together as I rush forward. As I get closer the sparkles only grow more dazzling. They are golden coins, they are crystals and diamonds. I stretch the bones of my fingers out in front of me as my body carves through the otherwise still atmosphere. I long to hold them and feel them pool in my palm and drip down the length of my arm, soak my neck and shoulders with splendor and slide down my throat into my stomach.
I can taste it!
From the forest I burst, and the force of my exit shakes the trees and rouses the animals from their petrification. Behind me the wind pulls leaves from their branches and creatures from their hiding holes, the leaves whisper and the animals scream. I don't care. I spare no thought to any of them. I give nothing away, not even a glance. I focus on what I want now, what I need now, the deep thirst that sits in the crevices of my bones and the largest parts of my soul. Before me is the river, lit up with speckles of the sun. I yearn for it. I reach for it. My body topples over and I plunge through the reeds and into the water. I drink my fill even as the current ushers me away from my waking place. The water enters every part of me, passes from my mouth through the holes in my jaws and the spaces between my ribs and gaps in my pelvis. I can't keep it in. It flows, in and out, and around me. I grow drunk with the effort of breathing in the river. I would cough and cackle if I had the flesh for it. When I am under I look up and see a golden dish, I surface to grasp it. I look down and see precious stones, and dive under to swallow them.
I am not a prisoner to the river because I choose to take it and taste it, and futilely fill my belly with the sweetness. It carries me because I let it. Soon the treeline on either side grows thin and the weeds on the river's bank grow thick and I am in a place as equally unfamiliar as the burial mound.
Distantly, I wonder what could have happened. Why was I there, and why are jewels of my crown all strewn on the ripples of the water?
I think the answer is not so important as the crown.
