The end of the day had come, and with it the return of the exhaustion that crept over him daily. The little shadow could not tear himself away from the adventures of the small meat and the Pickles. While the Pickles did not cause strange stirrings within his mass, the small meat did. What were these stirrings? The rudiments of half-remembered events.

Names, faces, moments of time returned to him that he could not hold onto for long. He saw a little girl, for now he knew that the small meat was something called a little girl. This little girl was someone who made the warm feeling within his mass expand. Yet, something else caused it to retract.

The shadow saw two different images superimposed over each other. One was of a smiling small meat, and the other was of the same small meat battered and torn apart as thought attacked for her flesh. It was confusing. He could not quite understand the strangeness in his mass. It… hurt his mass.

The shadow became a dragon, and the dragon began to pant wildly. He slammed his head down onto the ground several times in a bid to make the terrible images stop. He did not wish to remember. Not if this was what would come to him.

So strong was his desire not to remember, that he soon did not. The stream of memories slowed to a trickle and soon stopped. Once again, he was little more than a hungry beast without thought.

Night was soon upon them, and with it came the stink-meat. The dragon did not like the stink-meat. It tasted terrible, and the scent was overwhelming.

Zombies, the stink-meat, roved the nearby neighborhood. A few stopped to beat on the walls of a nearby meat cave that held another herd of meat that the little dragon did not concern himself with at the moment.

However, as time passed more and more of the stink-meat appeared. Two stink-meats became six and then a dozen. The meat within the house was distressed. He could hear their pitiful cries from within the confines of his borrowed meat shed.

It was of no interest to him, and yet he could not stop thinking of the crying meat. Soon, the little dragon could take it no longer. Gone was the form of a dragon and up he rose as a cloud of darkness.

The small cloud drifted through the air and crossed the street. Quickly, he became the dragon once more and began striking out at the stink-meat. His tail lashed. His claws struck. His teeth did not bite, however. He had already learned not to bite the stink-meat. Their stench alone was too much to bear, much less the flavor of their flesh.

Thunder rang out from a nearby window. A meat had unleashed the power of a bang stick. A stink-meat that had tried to climb inside of the recently broken window, fell out of the house and down to the ground without its head. Again, and again did the bang-stick roar. Soon, the stink-meat near the windows were all defeated.

Seeing that he was not needed, as the warm meat cried no longer, the little dragon left the area then became the shadow before he returned to the meat shed. He was not certain why he chose to be so stealthy about it, but he did not want the warm meat to know that he was using the meat shed. Truly, he could rest within the earth now that he could become the shadow, but the warm meat would still gather and become a mild annoyance if they knew of where he laired.

As he slept, he could no longer avoid the memories that tried to awaken within him earlier. The little dragon soon found himself in a strange place, a grassy area near a tree. Two small meats were nearby, one of which looked similar to the small meat who went adventuring with the Pickles.

The other small meat was strangely blurred, as though he could not be seen properly from any angle. The little dragon did try to comprehend that form, but at best he could discern that it was a meat similar to the meat he wore when he was not a dragon.

“You don’t want to be a bad guy, do you?” asked the small meat.

The other meat responded, though the dragon could not comprehend what was said. Time passed, and the scene moved forward. It was not until the small meat hopped down from the tree limb that she sat on that something happened which caused the little dragon to be concerned. The small meat landed near a patch of brambles and her clothes were caught in them.

“Oh no, my shirt…” she said sadly. Her shirt had been caught on the brambles and the thorns had torn it.

Overhear storm clouds began to gather. The sky grew black, a thing that did not escape the attention of the dragon. The other meat free the small meat from the brambles. Yet, the dragon paid no attention to them but to two things. The thorns and the dark black sky. Something about those two things stuck in his head and remained with him as he awakened early in the morning.

For the first time, the dragon manages to whisper out a coherent word that he was intentional instead of a random utterance. “Thorn... black. Black thorn….”

Something about those words caused his head to hurt each time he spoke them, but he could not be certain of what the reason was at the moment. Somehow, they seemed to be important.

During the night, more of his mind had returned to him. While he whispered those words repeatedly, he looked around at the interior of the tool shed. He knew it now to be a tool shed and not a small meat cave. He recognized simple tools such as a hammer and a saw. Little, by little, his mind was returning to him. Yet, the only thing he could think of for more than a few seconds were those two words. Black, and thorn.