My lungs are heavy and my feet are unsteady. The minuscule shafts of sunlight blazing down through the thick motherly canopy sear my flesh like the erratic tattoos of an alleyway artist.

I squirm away, grasp at the trunk of a tree. I stand, I step, I fall. My mind is as hazed as the mists swirling around the venerable whispering poles holding up the shade like skyscrapers of the forest.

They tell me I am a newborn, and they cackle, oh they cackle like crows at my bewilderment. I collapse with my back against a tree, huffing like a chain smoker as I stop moving for what seems like the very first time in my life.

"Who are you?"

I get no response.

"Who am I?"

I get no response.

"Where am I?"

I get no response.

If man is alone, then it is man's duty to create, for man is the highest form of life on this earth.

As that thought passes through my head, the trees begin to cackle again.

"Yet you are no man," creaks a shrill voice from every angle.

"Yet you walk with the hooves of a beast," whispers the dulcet tones of the wind itself.

"Yet you only claw at our barks and trample our children below," chides a deep authority from the bowels of the tree behind me, reverberating throughout my whole body, jolting me into an acute awareness of myself.

A thick coat of fur runs down along my ungulate legs, both capped with pristine onyx hooves. The same coat of fur extends up to my waist, but I notice nothing between my legs.

"The lamb is lost when God doesn't give it something to procreate with?" inquires the shrill voice, its tone filled with dry amusement.

They're in my mind, not even in here am I alone. I feel so extremely naked... And yet I am not cold, though my chest and stomach are exposed, I feel only warmth. My heart - no, my two hearts - beat like furious drums, burning with a passion I have never known. Yet more fur covers me from my shoulders to my palms, and upon each finger rests a serrated claw.

"I am a monster," I whimper, dejected.

"You are a child of God," grumbles the deep voice from behind.

"What God?" I smirk to myself, "There is no scientific evidence for such a thing."

The forest goes silent in its scorn.

"Then, child of Science, leave us fools to our own devices. May you find what you seek in the village to the east," says the shrill voice with such contempt that it was almost spitting at me.

And the voices stop. There is no more cackling, creaking, there is no wind and no rustling of the leaves. A perfect stillness encompasses me as though I sit in the eye of a hurricane. A path appears before me, though no sign or trail exists, an instinctual clarity guides me.

I stand out of spite, a beam of light touches my chest, and yet it does not burn as it had done before. I have a sudden realisation, I don't know anything. Everything I had said, was out of instinct. Did I even say anything at all? What? I... I am nothing. I have nothing. I am hungry. I am thirsty. I want to have food. I want to have water. If I know nothing, why do I know so much?

I can hear something calling for me...