He learns quickly. When he opens his eyes, his first sight is a bloody smile. He copies the gesture, showing off teeth and breathing in a scent he will come to recognize well. It sits in his nostrils, cloying, making him blink and snort, lifting a front limb to try rub it away.
He learns quickly because he has no choice and because he is young and that is what all young things do. No Mercy is his father, his carer, his guardian, his warmth at night. But the buck is also loud and angry, his rage causing the birds to stop singing and the creatures to scurry away to safety. They don’t always make it. Then come the screams. Blood splatters on the earth, the trees and Chosen One where he is huddled.
When he starts making words other than whimpers, No Mercy is pleased. When he uses them too much, No Mercy is annoyed. So he learns when and which words. Sometimes if he times it just right, all of No Mercy’s anger melts away.
‘You are nice,’ he says one day, hoping he has chosen the right words.
The green buck smiles and smiles and seems so happy that Chosen One can’t imagine his good mood ending.
It does.
It ends when Chosen One meets someone other than his father. This Kimeti is slight and gentle, with a kind voice that he trusts instantly. He stumbles to this strange new kin and rubs his head against their leg.
‘Are you all alone?’ The stranger asks.
‘No,’ he replies happily.
He learns that day that No Mercy doesn’t like to share. No Mercy is terrifying and violent but he still loves him, because it is all he knows.
Chosen One learns about the others; while the green buck his ranting, pacing up and down, voice rising to a fever pitch of hatred and madness. Sometimes it’s about the does. The ones who spurned him, left him, tore him open. Sometimes it’s about the spineless one, the father, the bug he’d like to squish. Other days the truth spills out, about his mother but never his real father, about desperate longing for love and recognition.
And so, one day, when No Mercy is at his worst, the young Kimeti says the words:
‘I love you.’
It’s easy after that.
And so the days turn and seasons change the Chosen One begins to learn just how special he is. He suspected it, of course, he remembers his dream but now he knows. Destiny, he tastes the word and lets it set his thoughts on fire. A great purpose that only he can accomplish.
He sees it in No Mercy’s eyes, when the older back in quivering with emotions he can’t control and only soothing murmurs will settle him. He feels in the steady ‘thump thump thump’ of his blood when he helps No Mercy punish the world for its sins. He hears it in the soft whimpers and the squelch of flesh.
Injustice is rife. Pain and suffering plagues swamp. There seems no end to it.
But there is.
That is why he is here.
Chosen One.
