The Year Two Hundred,
The black skeleton sat by the well, cradling the ruby red eggs like a mother hen. It never considered leaving its only home—how could it? A skeleton has neither a heart nor a mind. Other than the rhythmic pulse of the well, all it felt, all it understood was the sun passing overhead every afternoon, flooding its empty chamber with light.
With no instinct other than to make its way to the source of the light, the skeleton left its cave one day and began to go west, crawling at first, then stumbling, finally walking, following the warmth of the setting sun. It left the eggs in the mountain.
The skeleton made its way west, always steering clear of the nearby river yet unable to avoid it entirely, for they traveled in the same direction. Any passers-by who saw the man of bones gave a wide berth and made straight for home to lock their doors and shutters tight.
A full season after leaving its cave, the skeleton came to a place where the river drained into a hole in the water. When the sun passed over the unnatural abyss, the hole reflected the light back a hundredfold. Feeling the overwhelming warmth, the skeleton waded into the river and approached the hole. It thrust its hand into the hole as if it could grab the sun itself like a red apple from a root in the ground.
When it withdrew its arm the skeleton’s clawed hand was no longer there. No cut or crack, the hand was simply gone, like the water that fell down the hole. As the sun set the skeleton crawled out of the river and continued trudging west. It did not—could not—see the dark monstrosity that grew out of the hole behind it, although it surely had a hand in its genesis.
The skeleton did not eat or drink or tire. At night it stopped walking and stood stone still until morning. It arrived at the edge of a great forest, but the canopy was so thick as to exclude the light. Rather than pass into the darkness the skeleton walked around the woods, a journey of untold time.
When it found its way back to the river on the western border of the foggy forest, it resumed its mindless trek toward the setting sun. It crossed fields that were covered in razor-sharp grass, but the skeleton passed through unhindered; the lush vegetation withered and burned wherever it came into contact with the black bones.
Beyond the plains were mountains with snowcapped peaks that clipped the clouds. The skeleton had a choice: climb over the mountains or go under, following the river through a lightless tunnel. It would surely have chosen the former, where it could feel the sun strongly, but the skeleton sensed the presence of another hole in the water and so it walked beside the river into the heart of a dark cavern.
When it found the second hole in the water the skeleton once again knelt and, having never learned its lesson, stuck its remaining hand into the hole, as if it could retrieve the one it had already lost. When it withdrew its arm its second hand was gone like a shadow in the light.
Undaunted, with no knowledge of pain, the skeleton recommenced its march west until it exited the cavern through a massive waterfall. A full year after beginning its journey, the man of black bones took the first step into a desert of blood-red dunes.