Having flopped away from his family in bits and bops, our hero, at age five, wandered alone on the beach.
He found a half living fish and its punctured eyeball.
He poured sand on top of it to calm it down. It worked.
He rushed to the sea's edge and felt a good long moment of accomplishment as it ran away.
He was spared a dashed ego when he turned around to follow a rotten wind's trail and the calls of a pile of men.
Yes, he saw a pile of men.
This was something.
He walked in weaving loops toward them...quickly, but also hesitantly...as a child can do without looking anything other than appropriately composed.
These men did indeed invite fear and interest.
So, he went near. And, stopped.
What are they about?, he wondered in one form of thought or another.
They play with me. They tell me something.
It seems nice to be large like that. But, that one looks dead. This one like the eye popped fish. Two pretend. Adults pretend too. I know that.
What do they tell me?
They ask after me. They tell me one thing and another. They are nice and they are not nice. I know that too. I would like to cover them in sand. Like the fish. Because they don't know what to do with themselves either, and they look cold and in need of a blanket. Half dead.
He, our hero, decides he doesn't want to be a man. Not an eye punctured, cold pretending, blanket-or-dead man at least. So he turns around, and begins to work out how he can become three again. It's not his time.
