Something was stirring the field. It was calling out to me from the sea of wind in the tall grass. I stared out into the sway, and I knew it was coming. The cold staring back at me, piercing my soul.
It had been years since I last was here. All I remember from that day was the rage, the pain, and the fierceness of the blazing sun beating down my back as I tilled the ground with my blood soaked hands. Then he came and grabbed my back. I turned to face him, but to this day I wish I had never seen his face.
His whole being was disfigured and he spoke to me through a contorted jaw as smoke blew out of his mouth. His skin was seared and boiled, and a giant bulge was stretching the side of his neck. He had no name I had heard of. He told me he had known my mother, but she wouldn't recognize him as he stood before me.
He said he was the cold, and he was coming for my flesh. As he spoke these words, a black scar like lightning was engraved into my back like a canyon. The harsh darkness that was expelled from the cold swept away my heart and soul. My finest work rejected for a lamb. The cold laughed and whispered in my ear,
"I'll give you a head start."
I left the beaten body in the field that day. Like the lamb he had slaughtered, I had abandoned him and exiled him from the world we knew, as I raced into a wilderness I had never seen, I had never touched.
The cold followed, chasing me wherever I ran to, keeping me a vagabond. It was always just one step behind me. The families I had made had always been a hollow promise to those I loved. The scars on my back had been a warning to those who feared. I was a condemned man to all who knew me.
It was always behind me, the cold, until one day I had found a hideaway. It was a cave deep underground I found it running by an Acacia. I was safe from the fear, at least for a short while. I had tried to cure my scars, but they were burned into me by the cold. My fear was written on my face for all to see, especially for my own eyes to see. When I realized that there was no running from myself, I fled. I fled back to the field where it all started, back to my burnt offering, back to his body.
The cold had been waiting for me. I ran towards it, into the field, into my past. I ran to my brother where his bones still lie. My father was there mourning the son I stole from him that day so many years ago.
I came to my father, but he didn't recognize my tortured face. He turned and left me hand in hand with his new son, one who wouldn't take his own brother's life over an unwanted offering. I fell to my knees and wept. My father left me for the cold, the devil himself, to take me away from the very ground I had taken away the promise given to me.
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