Steven, and we’ll call him Steven for now even though the man himself had no idea that Steven was his name, felt troubled. The first reason he felt out of sorts, and one we could solve very easily, was the whole ‘not knowing his name was Steven’ thing. Since we can’t go down there and tell him, that’s something Steven is going to have to live with for a while. Or maybe not too long, considering his circumstances.

Steven’s circumstances were very closely tied to what is troubling him. For instance, he had no idea where he was, or how he got there. These two unanswered questions felt very important from his point of view, although not as worrying as not knowing his name is Steven. My guess is experience. This wasn’t the first time Steven woke up naked under a bush, with no idea where the bush was located or how he got under it. It wasn’t an overly familiar feeling, Steven wasn’t waking up under strange flora on a regular basis, but this bush put the count at just over a handful of leafy beds, so he adapted rather well.

What Steven did know, and what should have overshadowed everything else but worryingly didn’t, was there was some green feral humanoid-ish looking thing trying to poke him with a sharp lump of metal.

“Kind sir?” Steven stepped to the left, and the green thing missed skewering him with its nearly sharp metal lump, “Sir, could you spare a moment to-“

The green thing, no taller than Steven’s belly button, growled at him at and snapped it’s teeth.

“That was uncalled for.” Steven was somehow more offended at the verbal abuse than the attempted stabbings.

The Beast, I call it that because it was a murderous pile of instincts stuffed into a small green frame holding a sharp lump of metal, looked taken aback. The thing relaxed its stance and cocked its misshapen head to the side, letting the lump of unwieldy metal hang at its side.

“That’s much better, now we can talk like,” Steven looked down at the haggard thing. It wore twisted furs that Steven felt weren’t quite done being turned into cloths, “civilized beings.”

Counter to all of Steven’s expectations, the Beast nodded in what appeared to be agreement. He felt there was a spark of understanding there, a first building block towards some sort of mutual-

That was when the little bugger stabbed him with the lump of metal.