Gradually, no idea how much time had passed, if any, he began to interpret that the youth was awake, or wakening, and that he no longer held the catatonic body of someone deeply internal. Someone in fact so far inside themselves that they could never be reached by – words, thoughts – by anything. Any form of communication at all. Except perhaps from the words of the thing that apparently had been whispering at him.

“– Are you there?”

“Sorcerer?” He wiped the foam off his throat with the cape still under his head. After he'd cleaned all the foam away, he told him, “Just rest. We'll sleep here. And. Just rest. Don't even think. We'll figure all this... tomorrow.”

“Sorcerer?” a million miles off.

“You're okay, don't even try, I'll figure something – we're going to sleep.”

“Sorcerer -”

His voice. Under his body. He held -

“...Yes?”

“Sorcerer -”

“Don't -”

Filtered past the croak in his throat, “Sorce -” the same time in his hand the rock he had hit his face.

The Sorcerer woke, in a heap, in an all too familiar landscape.

Alone.

Wrapped in his cape, at least, but alone. He must have – unconsciously mind you, wrapped it around himself.

Setty!

There she was. The old lady crone tree – his only image of femininity – he had no memory of who he was, remember. – He remembered that, he didn't remember who he was, but – just that he didn't know – who he was; but what he did – he remembered –

– That this was his personality; a personality, in his own head, despite everything, even more familiar to him than the landscape of repeated landmarks, images, the same things – actually endlessly repeated in a fake infinity: merely a cycle through a sequence that didn't end.

Setty was munching grass over by the old lady crone tree, quite happy. She'd stuck by him and not –

And then he remembered the facts of the perhaps most exciting incident of his life. – Given he could only remember about a day in his whole life; to achieve victory in this particular contest, of the most exciting incidents, this particular incident, did not have to be as exciting as it actually had been. It had been very exciting, in fact. And sore. In his face. – Because he'd been hit by a rock in it.

The Golden Bow.

He got on his feet, extremely careful, with deliberate and tentative care. Went over by the nearest landmark that was in fact a ruined wall collapsing in on itself, and looked around himself at where he was; mainly for, but not just, the Golden Bow.

“I met a travelling tinker who described a city of the lost. Or with a prison of the lost, or something of that variety, he was extremely addled by sorcerous herbs and I think, booze, also, he was spitting rather and – you know now I think about it – it's possible he was possessed by a demon. Or almost or quasi or intermittently. Or pretending that. But he did say that there was a city of the lost, or a city anyway with a prison of the lost. That it was the first habitation I'd reach of any serious dimensions; just following this road here that we're on. So I thought I'd – since I'm lost in the grandest and most existential sense, in terms of even I don't know - who I am or what's my purpose for existing – possessing same time the conviction there is one, a purpose, anyway; I mean look around,” he looked around, he was convinced, “I'm entirely convinced this is purposeful. And that anyway I have a purpose too. My only problem, is – that I don't know what it is.”

This was a snatch of a conversation they'd had. That he was currently right now remembering. He'd said that. Or something very similar – so he was good at remembering – no in fact that was exactly what he was not good at – apparently this was a complex... thing... whatever it was... memory. He'd like to know what his name was. Beyond. That was. Sorcerer. – More an occupation that an appellation. You know. Not to indulge an apparently – he could feel it – perhaps this was part of what it was to be a sorcerer – an irrational love for/compulsion to rhyme. Like an insane person.

Okay. What am I doing?

– He's gone.

All this to distract himself from the fact that he was gone. What about the short to medium term alliance – they'd hatched. Agreed, anyway. Two, memoryless, interestingly outfitted individuals; prone to seeing reality as a fake imposition from outside – the fake imposition of – he didn't know – something even, malefic?

And now he noticed too, or remembered, that that – it had left with the Golden Bow – it was this he had suffered – that pressure, was gone.

That pressure, that insistence, mounting – that they had both endured. That they be, both of them be – something other than what they actually were. This had been the insistence that was, he didn't know, in the air, in the world, in... everything/the world itself communicating solely and intimately this:

Be other than what you are.

It had been the world telling them it. To the extent that – it had also told him to – and this made him sad. Hurt Setty. And hurt him. But perhaps because the first thing had only met resistance, he didn't know, it had gone from that to –

Whatever it was. Wanting him to kill – the Golden Bow – Setty, his delightful big mare – that was why he'd left her. His horse. He wondered how he'd convinced her not to follow – what means had had to be employed – and this made him sad too – and then of course him.

He could see nothing but the things that repeated. He had no direction to go. He thought about that prison or city of the lost, for the lost, or whatever it was, the only, or at least the next habitation – he'd thought he might live there. He'd woken up in a bush, he recalled, after all. But no, no indication, at all – of – where had he gone? His partner. They'd partnered up to – well they hadn't really done anything yet apart from suffer pressure. But the youth had fought demons, the Bow – and so this was – but he'd felt that anyway – a world of them.

The Sorcerer had presumed that next they'd enter a cavalcade of bloody demon murder. – But this hadn't occurred. Together. Still time for that he –

And anyway now he had a mission apparently, because –

He had to find him.

And, he could say, anyway, there was always time for a cavalcade of bloody demon murder.

– There was also the part that before, he'd have to figure out how to do sorcery first.

Noting his activity, Setty, the extremely large and intelligent mare of the Golden Bow – she was a great, white mare – dappled; sauntered, if horses did that, over to him.

He was convinced he had no idea how to ride a horse, or even – that his arse remembered.

If parts of the body had memory, which he thought was a doctrine he had picked up somewhere; the memory for riding a horse, should be, of course, in the arse. But he really didn't think, along with his brain, even his arse, knew how to ride a horse.

“Setty.”

She came right up to him. She really was an unusual horse. He liked her very much and hoped that she wouldn't die at all, during any of this, frankly – that would be horrible – and she wasn't even his horse – he'd –

He'd get her back to the Golden Bow.

He grabbed a belt thing and thought, fuck it, and jumped.

He was right, his arse did not remember, but it did hit, with the weight of a full arse, Setty's saddle: puffing out the air from under it. Not from his arse, the saddle.

But where? And actually as well – how, too; because he didn't have a clue how to ride a horse.

This was a problem immediately solved however, because if he didn't know how to ride a horse, and he didn't, Setty did know how to be one.

She set out right away – going.

And -

Not knowing what else to do he just let it happen for a while.

But where was he – and then of course, Setty loved her master, her actual real guy master. And she'd been conscious; alive and aware, the whole time, actually. So his trying to figure out how to tell Setty where to go would anyway have been completely counterproductive.

She was the last – being – to see him. To see where he went, at all, anyway.

But it was that same path; it was that same valley, of repetition.

And she kept going through it.

– And immediately he was lulled into it.

Those pleasureful rhythms that it contained.

“Setty,” he rubbed her flanks, “Take me to him. Take me to the Golden Bow.” Maybe this was a supernatural horse. That would sure, in the here and now, be very handy.

The landscape repeated. The lady crone tree; stunted tree crone lady, again, whatever, repeated; the ambitious hill, the ruin on the left horizon – if that was a thing. It wanted to be a mountain, the hill, but wasn't. It was an ambitious hill. Repeating. So he thought. A repetition he had no wish to indulge, nor what had accompanied it.

But that madness was gone. That pressure, that insistence, that thing – that had driven him mad perhaps – perhaps even so that he didn't have to be. It was gone. And in the repetition, and in the repeating, he realised this too. That – the thing that had driven him had left, with the Golden Bow.

And in the repetition, in the repeating, of that landscape – The lady crone tree; the ambitious hill, the ruin on the left horizon, if that was a thing – he realised the other, concerning fact: that that repeating landscape, of those same familiar landscapes –

it wasn't.

The landscape repeated. Until it didn't.

Just running him through the cycle one more time until he got – until Setty took him to the end of it.

The sun was doing something, he didn't know, rising, setting, dawning, whatever. – It was twilight, or early, or late, something. In the world. He observed this.

Moving forward in the brand new things that appeared.

It was here he had to look for the Golden Bow.