Excerpt: Dragoon

He remembered the father carrying the snake away in a vase, the sound of glass cracking somewhere outside. Then the hospital and the dying. The soft breath pouring into and barely going out of his lungs. The mother screaming again, and the soft hmmm of the father’s tears was all he could hear and then the blue took him over again.
Now he felt the softness of feathers and soil lain all around him—a chanting in somber tones somewhere above him. The sound of church bells. The wetness of the earth, its warmth.
Then he remembered blooming. A thick root grew first, followed by the tendrils and muscles clenching the sour earth. Then he saw nothing. No darkness or light, no color or lack. He could only feel and hear and smell the depth of his heart. He could not move. Over time, the ground shook and the roots grew long and thick. Then it was not long before the light. The very first light of that day as the sun stepped up the eastern sea. He felt warmth like never before and it called him up. First his fists arose, clenched tight around rocks and mulch. Then his arms—green and thick as branches. His head came next, and there the light entered him. He opened his black eyes and let in all the light of the sun, blinding him to the world around him.
Hunter’s roots became thicker and sturdier as time passed, and he grew tall and solid, bright as the morning. His arms wrapped around him in a perpetual self embrace, and it felt good to him. His skin became thick, too, and he drank every drop of water from the sky that fell onto him. Hunter remained thirsty for some time, and slept and grew for many years.
Hunter remembered understanding. In his own embrace, he had become grown over with moss and silt, wild fungus and choking vines that had wrapped around his throat. He became aware of everything touching him: of the ants who lived in his knees, their larval children burrowing into his bones. As night came on, the darkness made all the life around him go quiet, only the sounds of the stars and crickets deep in the forest.