When his chains hit the cave wall and he saw a small spark, it was, to the boy in his darkest and emptiest time in his young life, the happiest moment he had ever experienced. Yearning to see the small but beautiful light once more, he pulled his chain again and again, hitting the walls and ground, until the light of another spark allowed him a glimpse of a small insect.
Since being dragged into this cave, this was the first time the boy had seen a creature other than himself living in there. Not that he was sure if it was living or dead, as he hadn’t had a good look at it.
He saw the insect for less than a second, a truly brief interval. The insect was slowly, diligently crawling up the wall of the cave. Before the chain had struck the rock, the insect had been crawling up the wall, and with the spark, it had briefly cowered, then continued its way through the familiar dark at a slow, leisurely pace. They both lived in the same cave, but the world of the boy and the world of the insect were so different. While the boy had finally found another lifeform with him, it was completely disinterested in the pain, expectations, or hopes the boy held.
The boy smashed his chains again and again against the rocks, but he never saw the insect again. That was the first time he sobbed in earnest. Not the cries of someone driven mad with fear, but the tears of someone who understood and was saddened by their own loneliness—the tears of a human being.
III
Every boy who manages to survive in this world grows into a young man.
As time passed, the boy felt the chains grow shorter somehow. When he extended his arms or legs during his slumber, the feeling of steel digging into his flesh or the pull of the chains would jolt him awake. When he was dragged outside the cave and thrown through the too-bright air that was like crashing through sheets of ice, he could feel, as he struggled and resisted, that It was also struggling with him now.
One fateful day, the boy was again thrown into the freezing water headfirst. It bit into the boy’s legs as if to break them, plunging him several times into the water and back out again. On the last plunge, he sunk all the way to the bottom of the water before he was picked up by It and thrown into the darkness of the cave again. It once more shoved its hard and sharp thing into the boy’s neck.
The boy thought he was finally done for. He clearly felt the flesh on his neck tear and the relentless, painful sharp thing digging in between his bones. Thinking his neck would be cut in half, he closed his eyes.
When he woke, he was still alive.
He could not turn his head or move his arms and legs. It took much longer than usual to recover, and there was none of the raw meat or greens that had been placed around him like before. The boy trembled from hunger and fear as he lay crouched in the dark, not knowing when It would return to cut off his head.
It did not appear for a long time.
When he could finally move his limbs again, the boy realized he was no longer a helpless child anymore. The boy who had become a young man started to latch onto the small glimmer of hope of leaving the cave on his own. That possibility stirred in the movement of his limbs and gradually solidified into a plan.
IV
Just like the other times he was dragged away, the youth was one day being thrown into the outside world again.
Soaring through the air, It had him in its jaws. When the cave disappeared over the horizon, the youth suddenly swung his limbs.
An unplanned, compulsive act. It hadn’t expected the boy’s movement. When the chains tied around the boy slammed into It, It let out a cry the likes of which the youth had never heard before and dropped him from its grasp.
The youth fell through the air.
He collided into something hard.
He lost consciousness.
When he woke, a red sun hung over a forest. Having not seen such a thing for so long, the youth gazed at the sun as its red light bled into the horizon.
And the youth rose.
His whole body felt shattered. His head ached. But he was alive.
He still had the manacles on his wrists and shackles on his ankles, but the chain attached to them wasn’t tied to anything anymore and simply dangled there.
The only thing he wore on his body were those manacles and shackles. Scored onto his naked body, on his arms and legs and vertebrae and both racks of ribs, were a hundred and twenty large, triangular scars.
Towards the melting crimson light that was spreading into the sky, he turned and began walking.
His movements were slow.
For too long, he had become used to solely crouching in a cave or struggling mid-air or underwater. To stand and walk on his own two legs was like any other distant memory he had of his childhood—a faint dream from long ago. Not to mention all the places he injured when he plummeted from the sky. The manacles and shackles impeded his movements. When he got tired, he tried bending down and crawling or grabbing a branch to support himself upright for a bit, trying to stand steadily on his own two feet, slowly learning once more how to use his own body.