A Good Deed
We take our best actions, we follow our bliss, we examine our hearts and obey the noble within us. Then we suffer the consequences.

Prologue

It was dark inside the cave, so deep and winding, blessedly dark and damp and cool and still, and daylight filtered only a short way into the interior. A tiny rivulet of water trickled out the entrance, beneath the vines that draped the opening and almost completely obscured it from view. Indeed, the soft burble of the stream had been the only thing that had alerted even him to the cave's existence.

He'd been almost out of his mind with thirst, with heat, scorched both inside and out, only his indomitable spirit leading him on, his determination to live—to live and to return and to act—quickening his body, only this had enabled his survival thus far. He remembered, vaguely, as from a dream, collapsing face-first and full-body onto the watery thread and sucking at it as though to increase its very flow by his need. He'd remained prone, breathing and drinking, for hours until he'd gathered just enough strength to drag his bleeding, broken, suffering body into the shade of the cave, collapsing barely inside the entrance.

Finally, he came to, his mind reeling, in an agony of sensation, every part, every cell, his very skin screaming its protest at being dragged back to life.

But I am alive! And I will survive. And return.