Bearclaw Valley should we be dancing with all these madmen?

Every story starts somewhere. In this case, it is at the bottom of a deep dark well.

He is not alone here, and somehow he knows that. Reaching out with every inch of himself, twisting one way or another, kicking, punching, causing all manner of discomfort to the vessel that contains him. There is the distant, ever-present rumble of thunder; it quickens on occasion, becomes a boundless drum that reverberates through every cell of his being, and sometimes dies away to a nearly perfect quiet. There is always something there, though. A constant pressure, as if he is drowning without end. It isn't unpleasant. Warm, self-contained, constant.

Things change rapidly, especially so when one lacks a sense of timing. He does not know that in his dreamless sleep he is being built in to a shape, or that his shifting body disrupts the life beside him (or the vessel housing them). When he next hears the rushing of water it is too late - he is held aloft by the current, lifted from the nowhere place and carried elsewhere.

Slick, cold, and glimmering — he arrives with a plunge in to dirt, fighting the cold with twitching limbs, wriggling against the earth as if he has been reeled out of the river and deposited here, to suffocate, more fish than boy. He spits something from his little mouth at the same time that a warm tongue drags across his face, cleaning fluids from his nose. He cries; mourning the loss. The air tastes bitter but he drinks it in and soon enough, the boy will have forgotten of the nowhere place.

He tucks in against the undulating belly of his mother, lured by the warmth, and sleeps.