It was as if all days were dawning at once and whatever sun was in the sky illuminated all time and I understood vast wells of knowing. All the secrets of the universe were written there in the fabric of things, as if we were made out of old truths, the stitched and ready fragments of lost legends. All my thoughts were vast worlds of knowledge and details dug deeper than any light had known.
I stared into my mother's face and understood.
I had never left the valley after all. I was strapped to a gurney in my father's hut. My mouth was full of crumbs and someone was working my jaws to chew a bitter substance that bit into my tongue like an eager lover. It raced tendrils of pleasure down my chest and about my loins and out through the soles of my feet.
That was my father working his magic. That was my mother there watching on, one hand on a deck of computers, the other covering her heart, all the while nodding some secret ascent.
I had done something of which I could not be sure, but it felt like triumph and I held my family with my eyes a long while. We stood together and hugged each other like the last scene of a holy family fledging.
I chewed the bitter loaf and recalled my name. My name is Joshua.