heck

My memories of the place have faded, far more than they should have. But it's the same story I always hear. It's best if it just seems like it was a bad dream, they say. Thinking about it too hard can be dangerous, and the more you remember, the more it scars you.

Snips of emotion, flashes of color and sound and static images. The vague notions of what I did. Those remain.

I remember the one who took me, as he never did much to keep himself hidden. The great, coiling serpent of sunlight and wind that seemed to spring to life from one of the monuments below. An etching that peeled itself from the walls and lorded over the land. No matter what his shifting, angular form was, he glittered garishly in the sunlight.

There were others. Indistinct animal faces that would have seemed right at home had the rainforest any other wildlife but us. They were so strange to me for the longest time. Why some of them cried and begged for their homes, and why some of them simply went silent and disappeared into the plastic forest below.

For a time... I genuinely did forget who I was. Just like in a dream, when you see someone who looks nothing like you and doesn't share your name, but you still recogize it as yourself. That was me. No, I was Jaguar, the favored servant of my master. Most powerful, most loyal. One emotion that remains clear is how proud I was when I pleased him. I feel so sick about that these days. But I can't deny it.

It's only now that I realized that's probably why he wanted me. I was big. I was also spineless. Even in a situation where I didn't know who I was.