THE BEGINNING — WHEN MEN FIRST LOOKED UP
There was no name for the land then.
No borders. No nations.
Just earth beneath, sky above, and beasts in the dark.
The rivers had no names—only paths.
The stars held no stories—only silent fires in the black.
And he—the Wanderer—walked among them.
He had journeyed across this world,
walked through places no longer behind him,
but within him.
He did not speak.
He did not need to.
Words were still young, barely learning to crawl.
And the others—men and women with eyes wide from wonder—gave him space.
Not out of fear.
But instinct.
He looked like them.
But he was not them.
He felt human—
yet nothing of him, except the form he wore, truly was.
He had seen the one called Adamu,
and Kâva, rulers of a gifted land.
He had seen many others—cities lost to sand and ice,
the people before the great floods of water and frost.
His eyes were too old.
His silence, too loud.
He had seen man rise.
He had seen man fall.
He remembered humanity before the deluge,
and after it—
when they gathered around fires,
singing to the sky,
drawing figures in ash.
Sometimes in remembrance.
Sometimes as a message to something watching.
They believed the stars were eyes—
of ancestors, of beasts, of gods yet unnamed.
He would sit nearby.
Never in the circle.
Watching.
Always watching.
He saw the first prayer—
not spoken, but felt:
a mother lifting her hands to the heavens,
as her child coughed in her arms.
He saw the first lie.
The first song.
The first burial.
He saw man name the moon.
And feared they might name him next.
They began building after the frost withdrew—
small stones stacked into markers.
They called them altars.
He watched a boy carve a face into stone—
the first god given form.
It resembled nothing.
And everything.
"Why do you carve it?" He asked,
breaking years of silence.
The boy looked up, startled.
"So it remembers us," he said.
He turned away.
"It will," the Wanderer whispered.
He wandered then—
through savannah and mountain,
desert and forest.
He watched as fire was tamed.
As wolves became dogs.
As man stood taller,
and stepped bolder into the unknown.
He was there when a tribe painted on the cave walls—
hunts, stars, stories.
One girl placed a red handprint beside a mammoth.
Cain waited until they were gone,
then placed his own beside hers.
His hand was larger.
And alone.
He wept once—
only once.
His heart, too heavy.
A child buried their sibling beneath a cairn of stones,
whispering something into the wind.
The child kissed the air,
then walked away with eyes that had aged far too quickly.
He remained through the night, wondering as to why he watches them their joy and sorrows
lost in thought.
He tried listening to the wind,
hoping it would carry the message
to his brother.
But the wind never speaks back.
This was the beginning.
Before cities. Before myths.
Before stories had names.
When man first looked up—
and wondered.
And he—
looked down—
and remembered.
Even if he could no longer remember why.