“Lost”

Lewa tripped over a Bula root, almost falling to the ground. He growled in anger. Clutter. It was all clutter — these roots, these trees, the leaves and branches and stems and trunks. The water and the rocks. The soil, the sucking, spongy earth beneath everything else. All of it. It all had to go.

Clean it. The words echoed in his head, clear and strong and right. Clean it all. It must be cleaned.

“It must be cleaned,” Lewa muttered.

He blinked, confused by the sound of his own voice. What had he just said? It must be cleaned. What did that mean? It didn’t make sense.

It’s a — a quest of some kind, he thought slowly. A duty. But I thought — I thought I already had a quest. A duty. Something I was supposed to — supposed to —

As his thoughts trailed off into bewilderment, he was started to notice that he now held the tree root — the one that had tripped him — in his hands. How had that happened? He glanced down and saw the gouge in the earth where the root had been ripped free.

Did I do that? He wondered uncertainly. Why?

Before he could come up with an answer, he found himself raising his arms. A moment later, a howling gale was whirling around him. The wind tore the Bula tree straight out of the ground and tossed it aside.

Clean it all, Lewa thought, moving on. It must be cleaned.