The rain drummed across the water’s surface, pattering a sharp rhythm which caused the fish to dance.  Ripples arced and raced as they chased each other.  Minshina held out a hand, and watched the heavy droplets continue on their path, uncaring.  He stared up into the leaden sky. 

“Why does he do it, do you think?”

The tauren looked up from where he was watching the fish.  Even here under the rain, the fur of his arm smoldered and smoked.  The wind which scudded past almost carried off the tauren’s answer, ‘though it left the falling rain to spatter unmolested onto the pond.

“I… do not remember.”

The fire spirits sputtered as they consumed the wood, agitated at their proximity to Neptulon’s children.  The light they cast in their hunger did not warm Minshina’s limbs, and did not sparkle from Minshina’s eyes.  He turned his eyes from the fire, and back to watching, curious.  Always it was the same.  He was sure that the answer was there, in the watching.  One day, if he watched enough, he would remember.  He would remember why.

The hunched figure sat by the fire, at the edge of the pond.  Beside him was a small keg – Minshina could remember the keg, almost.  The memory of it danced on the edge of scent and taste.  If only he could remember.  Perhaps he would ask T’chali when next they met.  T’chali would know.

The hunched figure tied sharp metal to the end of a string, tied the string to a stick.  Nodding behind his mask, the figure seemed satisfied.  He held the sharp metal close, peered at it, and nodded again.  Then, mysteriously, he threw it away.  The metal flew far from him, cast off, discarded, and fell beneath the surface of the pond, abandoned.

Then the masked figure held hold of the stick, and waited.  Minshina and the tauren waited with him.  Minshina so wanted to remember.  Always it was the same.  The waiting.  The splash.  The masked figure starting up, swinging the stick like a weapon, and pulling the string’s length to the shore.  The figure pulled the sharp metal from the floundering fish, and beat its head against the stone once, twice, until it was still.  The scent of the fish’s blood struck Minshina’s nostrils.  Blood.  Food.  He remembered.

He remembered eating.  He remembered drinking.  He remembered hunting.  He remembered his father, his mother, his brother.  He remembered dancing.  He remembered warm fires.  He remembered rain wetting his fur.  He remembered laughter.  He remembered war.  He remembered burning sun, he remembered silver moon.  He remembered anger.  He remembered taste, touch, scent, sound, sight.  He remembered fish.  He remembered… that soon, again, he would forget.

He would forget.  Lost again, until the witch doctor would help him to remember.