I forced myself downhill and through the bushes. There was a call in the air, under the half moon and the stillness of the air.
No, I did not know what drew me on, only that there was a call in the silent midnight air, a demand, a thrust. Everytime I came to a thorn bush, there was an impulse that made me ignore the blood drawn. When I came to a slope, I hesitated not but stumbled on, falling face first down down the hill.
The call of the water lured me on, here in the built up desert.
It was the silence of the night that gave them away. As I hesitated, the rats came.
A force of thousands, silent claws clicking in the night.
I danced around as they flowed past my ankles. But there was no escape, and I was forced in their direction, and as they flowed, I went, in their silent direction. The only real sound, above the clicking of their feet, being the pounding of my breath and the tamping of my boots as I ran in the melee.
Eventually the rats cleared and I lay, panting, on the desert floor under the half moon.
The call came to me, clear under the desert moon. I groaned, as I rolled onto my back, and stared up at the clear sky.
The stomping awoke me, as they came, under the half moon. The pigs of the night, the wild boar, and I screamed and rolled onto my front as they stampeded towards me.
I am used to the night.
The night holds no fear for me. For my house is barred against the midnight sun, against the spirit that comes only under the moon. My family is inured to the revenant, the visitant shall be rejected.
But the herd came onto me, and I was thrown into their wild flight. And so I ran again, with the hogs of the night, towards the Call.
I was thrust into the clearing, from whence the Call came. And as if by magic, no animals accompanied me.
But they were there, in the dark. I could not see them, I could not hear them, as I directed desperate glances into the darkness, but they were there. Looking. Silently.
In front of me came the Call, and I staggered forwards.
There, the humans had laid a pipe.
I sat there, under the moon and the Master of the Planets as he Rose, and I wondered.
A few minutes later, I staggered away.
The water rose, the water rushed, the water sought its own old pathways.
I looked around desperately. The water was rising.
I do not understand how I got out of there. Only that the cliffs were steep, the water was rising… and the rats were everywhere.
A constant scuttling pathway to safety, or to hell, I knew not.
I awoke later, in my own garden.
The emergency light were accompanied by sirens. They wanted to know if anybody had been left behind down there, behind the flood of the dam.
I smiled.
For I thought that the rats had made sure that anybody left behind would not be found.
And the wild boar would have a place to drink, this mating season.