Prologue.

            The landscape sparkles with glistening ice. The crisp, yet utterly calm, chill air biting with sharp freshness. Not a thing moves save the skittering of spiders as they run on silken spider webs. A few birds rise in an excited arc, singing in musical harmony and disappearing in the frozen woods.

            As the sun rises, it spreads an ironic warmth with a yellow orange light which fades to lilac through pale blue and on to the opposite horizon, a deepening navy.

            The frozen ground crunches underfoot and cuts a stark contrast to the natural silence. Gravel scrapes its distinctive sound through the air and puffs of steam rise from the warmth of breath.

            I remember nothing. I cannot think of my life before. I sit alone day after day wrapped in concentration, racking my mind for thoughts which don’t exist. As I walk through frosted gravel, the rhythmic crunch consumes my being replacing all attention. I am at a loss. Weeks, months and now a year have passed since I returned here, to this house, to this shrine to all I once was: to a life I will never remember.

            The only memory I have is of my last day before the calling. It was like this day: Still, shimmering, almost lifeless. A perfect moment preserved. I don’t remember getting up or getting dressed, or even going outside; only a moment of peace as all troubles dissolved. I walked through the gravel, crunching underfoot. I looked up and ... knew. It is so hard to explain, I knew what it was I had always wanted; my life up to that point had only come to pass in order that I reach this moment. It had all been false, a play, a dream. But that calling was my future, my destiny and there was nothing I could have done to change that even if I had set my soul upon it. There was simply no other way my life could have gone, so without a backward glance, I left.

            I do not know what I did in the weeks that followed, it may even have been months or years, but my next memory is the beginning of a sequence of events that I remember with crystal clarity. Perhaps the memories are so detailed that they overwrote all previous experience, I know not, but I remember almost everything I have experienced from this point onwards: every word, every sight every smell, even my own random thoughts. None of this can I explain, but perhaps in the telling of it some greater understanding can be achieved. It is unlikely that I will ever recover the days of my childhood, my parents, family, friends or relatives. Even who I was. These things are simply lost to me, but I have over the years accepted that my life began on that clear winter morning. Standing outside my home and gazing out over the sea.