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It was nighttime outside, and the moon shone down on us with a generous luster, reflecting off the water of the pond and crystalizing in the droplets from the waterfall that drowned out a large amount of distant noise. The air was damp, as was the ground, and King lead me around the sheltered perimeter away from the waterfall until we were no longer covered by stone. It was so dark out, though, even with the moonlight.

"King, it's so dark. How can we even see anything?" I asked.

"I planned to fix that, but doing so leads to what I had planned for you next. Follow me a bit further."

We would walk along the water's edge down hill a bit, past smaller cascades of water over rock as we made our way deeper into the forest, down into the valley. I could barely see in front of me, so I took to holding King's tail as we walked. He didn't seem to mind, though I could feel it tense a bit as if it was trying to remain lowered. He must've thought for a moment I was considering getting up under there again.

We went down the hill quite a ways, or at least it felt that way, as the dimming light from the dying campfire in the cave had entirely disappeared behind me. I kept stumbling on the irregular terrain of the forest floor, and as we headed down the hill i'd ask King "where are we going?"

"To the forest's heart."

"The forest's heart?"

He didn't reply. We kept walking, and eventually the downward slope would level off. The creek trailed off to the left, but we kept straight. I assumed we were walking straight, at least, but I could barely see King in front of me so it's hard to say which direction we were traveling. It was so dark I could have accidentally let go of his tail and grabbed a wolf's instead and I would've had no idea of knowing until we were back at his den. The only real certainty I had was his unmistakable smell.

We stopped eventually, though, in the pitch black. King would reach behind himself and take my hand from his tail into his grasp, holding it as he pulled me forward. We progressed a good fifteen feet or so farther and I suddenly felt a ringing in my ears. My head felt as if the pressure had been drained from it, and I felt a bit dizzy. King would turn his body so that we were facing eachother, and took both my hands and held them in his.

"You are in a sacred place" he said, his hands clasping ahold of mine as I looked up to him in the near darkness. I could only make out vague shapes of his face in the night, but I could tell he was looking down at me as well. The atmosphere around us was so intense, I felt as if the blood in my body was being pulled to the surface of my skin, like I was going to burst outward. It had my skin crawling, my stomach turning in circles as it felt like the gravity was inverted solely with the intention of making me sick.

"Are you ready to feel the pulse of the wild world?" he'd ask me. I really wasn't. When I'd envisioned a date and him taking me to see something "wonderful", I'd pictured a lake or perhaps a mountaintop. The tinnitus in my ears was growing, rising from an uncomfortable ringing to a rather heavy, loud undulating wave that felt like worms, worms trying to enter into my brain. I wanted to pull my hands from his and dig them into my ears and pull out whatever was crawling into my head. It felt so physical, everything about the environment felt as if it was trying to penetrate the surface of my skin, either from the outside-in or the inside-out. I wanted something to make it stop, and I hoped that agreeing with him would change our environment. Even if it got worse, at least it would be a step forward, something in motion.

"Yes," I agreed, "yes I want to feel it."

"Good. Look into my eyes."

The eye sockets of King's skull had a dim glow to them, like two fireflies floating around perfectly still in the center of them. I stared into the lights and felt the crushing outward pressure of the forest pulling me further, pulling me outward, attempting to rip me open. The white light in his eyes expanded outward as well, pulled by the pressure just as I was. It illuminated the space around us and I saw that I was in a circle of stones, a perfect circle of about a dozen stones, jutting from the ground in the perimeter around us. The leaves and debris of the forest floor had been sheared away, forced outward, and we stood on bare dirt. I don't know how I became aware of this, because at no point in this experience did my eyes wander from the fireflies remaining captured frozen in the invisible spiderwebs of his eye sockets.

My chest began to hurt, and my body began to shake, as if I was trying to stifle a cough that was going to force itself free regardless of my protesting. My throat hurt, and King would reiterate "look at me" as if he felt my rising desire to avert my gaze and surrender. I had a full tremor at this point, my mouth instinctively opening and closing as if preparing to scream or regurgitate. What had I even eaten today? I felt nothing weighing in my stomach as the sensation in the middle of my body was pulled outward.

"You have the body of a bird with a horse's heart. It is far too big for your own good, and that beating in your chest will punch until it shatters your ribcages and bludgeons itself to the surface. You are far too frail for the blood in your body. Do you feel that?"

I didn't answer. I had no answer.

"Birdshot for the body, buckshot for the chest. You civilized creatures have a means of killing things in marvelously unique ways, and your strange design requires you specifically to be killed twice over, at least. Why doesn't that scare you? Are you not afraid of death because you're aware you turn the cat green with envy, with your inexterminable nature capable of making more distance in two lives than he does in nine?"

My eyes focused on the fireflies. Tears formed in the corners of them, but they didn't stream down my face.

"You want to run. You want to look away and break this bond. You're in the eleventh hour on the precipice of discovering what it means to be alive and what blood and bone lies on the backside of the bark. You are terrified, though, sick to your stomach. I see it in the way your throat is quivering, as if it is preparing to heave up either sobs or bile. You are a man in body but still a child in mind, and the woods are trying to kill you. Are you going to live through this? I know you can feel the pressure in your body."

I could, he was right. I could feel it and I felt like it was going to truly kill me. I felt as if something was going to hemorrhage in my head. I felt as if the pressure was dropping minute by minute, like I was in the eye of the most catastrophic hurricane and it had stalled directly over me.

"You are spoiled by the noises of your homeland, the drowning out of the pulse. You have not heard the pulse before now and you are afraid. You are accustomed to your comforts and your escapism to soothe your worries and allow your mind to avoid the responsibility of thinking. You have never heard the pulse of the wild before now, and you are not equipped to handle it."

He was right. The pulse in my ears was terrifying me. It felt as if my brain was being eaten by worms, writhing, wriggling sensations traveling down the triangles of my ears into my head. I could feel myself grinding my teeth as my eyes began to squint in discomfort, flinching over and over.

"The mother births the child knowing the danger, and still the child learns to walk. He staggers to his feet, terrified, knowing he must. He is hatched on a clifftop and throws himself off the ledge to the jagged rocks below him knowing he must. He is born with the scent of life dripping off him, knowing maws are manufactured exclusively to consume him and his downy coat. Does he surrender? Does he lay down and cry for help? Does the world stop to help him? Should it stop to help you?"

"King, please--" I began.

"Do you deserve to live? The pressure is going to kill you, Nico. Will you let it? Do you expect someone to save you, as they always have?"

I went to speak but found the pressure was dropping suddenly. My mouth opened, and my lungs were suddenly pulled of air. My body collapsed limp in King's hands and he let me go, falling forward and grabbing him by the fur of his chest as my eyes ran bloodshot. He did nothing to support my weight except stand there and let me collapse forward onto him, choking. I continued to try to inhale and found the pressure too low. I was incapable of breathing, and I could feel it killing me suddenly. My body would spasm some, and my hands grabbed at his fur as I tried to pull myself to look at him. The wobbling waves of sound in my ears did indeed sound like a pulse, now, and I could feel it. My blood was pumping the same rhythm as the life flowing through the woods around me. He was right. I could feel the pulse of the wild.

I kept trying to pull air into my lungs and found nothing, and I knew I was about to die. King had lead me here to kill me, just as I had suspected in the back of my mind all along. A few weeks before, I would've been fine with that. I would've surrendered, let him suffocate me and leave my corpse here in the stone circle for someone else to find and speculate about all the details of my life. Not now, though, not after the deer and not after how long I'd been here.

"I ask you again, do you deserve to live? Do you deserve to feel the life force of the wild, or will you draw your limbs inward and die on your back as an insect?"

I could feel it, for a moment. Hate. I hated him. I hated King. I hated King and I needed to tell him that, I felt it rising in my body and suddenly filling my lungs with life. I inhaled loudly, a cry of life breathed inward as I felt my body fill with life again, my chest swelling as my hands grabbing his chest suddenly pushed. I thrust forward and found my voice once more, crying it out. Hate. My smaller body would throw weight against King and shove him backwards, feeling his massive size topple beneath me. He fell to his back and I grabbed him by the neck. I wanted to squeeze, but I didn't. I wanted to strangle him and show him how he made me feel, but I didn't. I just grabbed him there, and I could see in those firefly eyes that he was looking directly into mine, which were full of tears as I screamed at him.

"You BASTARD! You AWFUL, DREADFUL BEAST! You will not kill me! You CANNOT kill me! I hate you! I HATE you!"

I was spitting in his face as I yelled, goggle-eyed and glaring at him. My hands slid from his neck to his face and I shook him, up and down, causing his head to near bump against the forest floor as I jostled him about. His hands stayed at his side, leaving me to do as I pleased as I berated him.

"All I wanted today was a date! I just wanted to do something fuckin' NORMAL with you and you bring me here and terrify me! All you do is terrify me and make me do horrible things! You're so hateful! You're so--"

It suddenly occurred to me that I could see him surprisingly well. I could fully see him, actually, with no issue. I could see everything around us. I would pause amidst my tirade and look up suddenly. It was daylight, the sun was shining on the two of us and all the world around as I was incapable of continuing to curse at him. The forest was exceptionally vibrant, though, like it had been when we first reached the cave. It looked artificially saturated, a thin blur of fog over the entire world that left aspects of the nature looking almost iridescent. I squinted suspiciously as I'd realized that we'd been deep in the dead of nights only a minute ago.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"You survived."

"Don't bullshit me right now, King. Don't dodge the question. What happened?"

"The forest tested your strength, and you broke through it's attempt and dominated it. You've been rewarded."

"With what?"

"The forest's heart. Here, you will begin to understand the wonder of the wild."

I sat back slowly, climbing off of King and staggered to my feet. My body didn't ache, neither did my head, which was unexpected after the crushing anti-pressure I'd been experiencing only just a moment. My eyes wandered to the sky and found it exceptionally bright, like my eyes were indeed aware it had just been night. They struggled to adjust as it blinded me, but as my vision became clear I could see that it was indeed broad daylight, and all the stars were visible in the sky. It was as if the sun surrendered some of his brilliance to allow everyone a chance to shine in this place, and I could see the stripes and streaks of galaxies painted across the blue in brilliant ways.

"The sky is beautiful here. Where exactly is this place?"

"We are exactly where we were, in a way. All living things have an outside and an inside. You stand before me, and I see what is outside you, and yet there is a tremendous amount of things happening inside of you as well. The forest is equally alive, and contains layers just as we do.

"So we're...under the forest's skin, in a way?"

"Yes, as I said, at the heart. I brought you here despite knowing how difficult it would be on your body, because it is where the forest is most alive. Come, take a look at this."

He was standing under a tree with a branch in his hand, and as I approached him he'd tell me "look at the leaves". I held one in my hand, and I could feel it even before I'd seen, a pulse, like pressing your fingers to the side of your neck. It was beating slowly, peacefully, at rest. Upon viewing it, though, I could see that that the veins were pumping with life. I'd always known trees were alive, of course, but viewing it so literally was something entirely different. It was a little intimidating. King would run his hand down the branch of the tree, beckoning my eyes to follow as I noticed the structure of the wood, the way the lines resembled muscle structure, veins, tendons, almost seeming to move as he would pull the branch some. As beautiful as it was, it brought awareness that I was surrounded by trees, by plants, by a million living things. My feet were on dirt, but surely they were standing on the roots of this breathing creature, perhaps on a plant being crushed beneath my weight. I suddenly felt very nervous that I was hurting something.

"King, does it...know we're here? Do all these plants and trees know we're here?"

"Of course. Many can see without eyes, and smell without noses. It is what the wild gives to us, the ability to adapt despite our handicaps."

"Does it bother them when we walk through here, trampling their roots and sometimes their entire selves?"

"Such is the fate of the wild world, Nico. To exist together is to kill eachother. They already know this. It is something we all should learn."

That remark gave me chills, and I found myself drawing my arms up to cross at my chest, elbows in hands as I looked away. Everywhere I looked, I was becoming aware of it, the breathing of the wild. Standing still, looking out into the distance, my eyes could detect it on every living thing, every floral being breathing, living, aware of me.

"Are there...animals here?" I'd ask.

"Ferals, uncivilized ferals. Those with sentience are not to be here without proving themselves. The innocent, though, they may remain."

"Is sentience a corruption of innocence?" I asked. He nodded.

"Yes, to know the civilized world and it's paralyzing enticements is to reject the wild world, and thus to be denied it. Only those who prove themselves worthy of wanting to thrive inside it may see it."

King paused as he began to walk away from me, looking back to say "even if they hate it."

My face drained of life at that remark, and I stammered "King, I--I'm sorry I said--"

"Nevermind it. What's said is said. You are here, that is what matters. Come, I have more to show you."

As we walked through the dewy, vibrant world, I felt almost as if I had somehow stepped back in time, thousands of years before, to a primordial realm where man had not yet touched the wild. I felt as if I wasn't supposed to be there, as if I'd trespassed on someone else's land, and yet I found myself being cyclically soothed by the warmth of the world, the perspiring of all life around us with the moisture hanging foggy in the air. The environment swirled with the movement of every living thing around me, and I found myself being highly conscious to where I stepped.

"Where are we going?" I'd ask.

"A pond, it's just up ahead."

Indeed, only about two minutes later we would approach a pond, a pond surrounded by multicolored greenery and soft grass. The water was semi-clear near the surface, and I could see ripples all through it. The water was alive with species, though I could not make out exactly what species they were. The pathway up to the water's edge seemed to have been cleared just for us, as the trees and plant life parted a perfect passageway of plain grass right up to the land's edge, which hung about a foot above the water's surface.

"The creatures in these waters imbue incredible wisdom when consumed. They are a magnificent species of serpent, entirely aquatic." King talked as he stood behind me.

"Wisdom? What kind of wisdom?" I'd ask, turning backward to look at him before facing forward again, looking down into the lively water.

"I do not know. I have never consumed one. All I know is they must be consumed whole."

"Whole?"

"Indeed. It is why I wanted to test you with the worms, many moons ago, and why you needed to learn the reality of death before you could come here. I did not know if you were capable of handling this. I still am not entirely sure."

"Well, it must be important. Why else would you have brought me all the way to this point? You must want me to eat one, right?"

"I do, yes, but I doubt your will to do so. It will fight you, it will not go easily."

"Do they bite?"

"No, they are fangless."

"Well then, how bad can it be? Just gotta...figure out how to get it down without chewing" I'd say, hating the thought of it but imagining it couldn't have been that hard. I sat down in the grass and let my feet hang in the water, which was much warmer than the water back in the normal world. It felt almost artificially warmed, like a hot tub or something. I slid off the dirt into the water and felt the species around me stirring, but not fleeing. My feet found the soft, sandy dirt at the bottom and I waded into the water until it was up to my shoulders. Fish were swimming about in the pond, but so were the strange serpentine creatures, black, oily looking in the water. I captured one easily, as it put up no fight in letting me handle it. As I pulled it from the water, I would show it to King and ask if it was the correct one. He confirmed.

"So all I gotta do is eat it" I'd say, looking at it. It looked like a simple eastern rat snake, except the entire body was black instead of just the upper half. It's eyes were solid obsidian, reflective of the light, and I would open it's mouth to see it was indeed fangless, the interior of the creature a simple organic pink. It was a little confronting, looking it in the eyes, seeing it was very much alive and clueless, but eating something felt much more natural to me than than killing it with my bare hands. Surely, it would suffocate quickly, and would not last but a few minutes. I rationalized it in my head, because we'd come entirely too far for me to just give up now.

I raised it to my mouth and slid it into my throat, and it remained relaxed as if it had no idea what was going to happen to it. They must've truly not had any natural predators in this secondary world. As I began to feed it down my throat, though, I would gag and struggle. I couldn't get it but a few inches in before I'd heave hard and nearly vomit, pulling the snake from my mouth and approaching the water's edge where King was standing.

"Will you help me?" I asked.

"Howso?"

"Just feed it down my throat. My gag reflex is making me fight it, but if you could just keep pushing it down then I can just keep swallowing."

"Perhaps, if you are unable to do it yourself, you're not ready for it."

I insisted "no, really! You brought me all this way, and...and I don't wanna let you down."

"Fine. Hand it to me."

I would hand over the snake and crawl from the water, getting on my hands and knees and opening my mouth, my head tilted up slightly so my throat was as straightened as I could get it. King slid the snake to the back of my mouth and pushed well past my gag reflex, three or so inches down. I began to swallow, and immediately gagged. King, seeing this, would use that momentary burst of saliva to shove it forward forcefully and push well over half a foot down my throat. This was when I felt it begin to struggle. I could feel the creature beginning to try to turn around inside my throat, and the size of it was making it hard to draw in air. I swallowed, and felt a few inches sink downward, past my throat and into my chest. King pushed forward again and I heaved as another half a foot sank into me. The thing was about five feet long, and we were not even two feet in yet.

My mouth was dripping saliva freely and I could feel the creature was squirming around inside me. There was pressure in my lower esophagus where it was trying to turn itself around again, and I could feel a lump pressing on my lungs as it drew close to my stomach. King would force another half a foot or so down my throat, then follow it quickly with another half of a foot. I heaved again, and as I did he would hold the creature still so I didn't push any of it out. My eyes were watering now, and I had to close them as I felt that it had entered my stomach. It was writhing about aggressively now, and I felt the pressure inside me as it pushed it's body against my stomach walls, trying to find a way back up. I figured, surely, it would begin to suffocate soon.

"Keep swallowing. Stop thinking about it." King would order me, and I did my best to obey. The sound of pattering from my spit dripping in the grass was near constant now, but it was punctuated by loud, open-mouthed gulps as I forced myself to swallow the snake, inches at a time. We were at the tail at that point, and I could see I was approaching the last foot. Something about that gave me a bit of courage, and I took the last few swallows a bit more easily than the ones before. The final swallow felt almost like nothing compared to the thickest part of his body, and I gulped a few more times to ensure the tail went entirely down, and then we were done. I could feel it, coiled inside me, fighting for it's life. While I remained on my hands and knees, my arms and legs were trembling and my mouth was profusely salivating. I began to heave, my body lurching forward before vomiting suddenly. The snake did not come up, but I could feel in the contraction of my stomach that it thrashed about in panic. It was a terrible feeling, an intense ache of overindulgence not satiated by my sudden purging.

It was creamy, grey, mostly digested deer meat in the grass before me and all over my beard and muzzle. My eyes were now streaming tears from the vomit response, and I lurched again before a second lunge of deer haunch was spilled out in the grass. The sensation inside me was a sickening one, and I could tell my body felt as strongly against it as my mind did. It wanted it out, and though I fought with all my mind's power to keep it from vomiting again, it would. Three more times. At no point, though, did I fully regurgitate the snake. There was a point in which tail came up my esophagus--I could tell by the tickling pressure inside me--but never the whole creature.

"He will not come up no matter how hard you try, he is too heavy and uncooperative. It shouldn't be but a few more minutes before he will die from lack of oxygen." King said flatly, emotionless. I crawled a bit away from the vomit in the grass and laid down on my side to let the earth handle some of the weight hanging in my firm belly now. I could feel it, just like the life all around me, undulating. A serpentine, violent twisting in my stomach as a creature fought valiantly to escape it's fate, a fate it had done nothing to deserve. It suffered simply because I was there, because I had caught it, and because it wasn't experienced enough to have feared me. My mind wandered to the similarities between the snake and the deer, how they'd died simply because they hadn't considered it a possibility. Their naivety, their mind wandering to something or someone else, their relaxed state had left them both dead by my hands. The wild could be both so foolish and so vicious, so unassuming and so calculated, so intentional and so indifferent. What a terrible and beautiful place this world could be.

I lay there for ten or so minutes dealing with the undulations before I felt them cease. I didn't rise, though, but rather continued to just lay in the soft, moist grass and let it caress my tired body. My stomach was hurting severely, and I attributed it to cramps from the vomiting I'd done so recently. My mouth was still salivating, and I just wanted to lie there and let the symptoms pass as my body started to digest the snake and experience the wisdom that was supposed to wash over me.

"King?" I'd ask.

"Yes?"

"When is the wisdom supposed to come?"

"I am not sure. I was told it was supposed to happen quickly. Do you not feel anything?"

"I feel really sick, my stomach hurts a lot."

"Perhaps it must be fully digested first."

"Maybe. We should walk, that'll probably help me."

I rose weakly to my feet and felt the aching in my stomach only intensify, leading me to wobbling forward as King rose as well, my body leaning against his. He would outstretch his arms and catch me, holding me close to his large, warm body. I hugged him back, and I could feel him looking down at me. I tilted my head upward to meet his gaze, and suddenly the entire world spun intensely back with me. The starry day sky plummeted downward as trees speared into my field of vision from both sides of my eyes, the world shifting around me as I felt two heavy hands catch me by the small of my back. I bent backwards, limp, and spilled a coppery-tasting vomit from my mouth that poured up my nose from my inverted head. The world became fractal, separating endless into crystalline compartments reflecting only the most necessary color of every image around me, and I could see them reproducing and twisting around, kaleidoscoping in my eyes. The coppery warmth oozed out my mouth and trickled right back into me, through my nostrils, into my lungs, and I began to aspirate it. It felt like rock candy in my lungs, gemstones of the universe floating freely from the metallic tasting contents of my stomach. The world fractalized endlessly before me, shapes becoming larger and simpler before expanding back into countless small polygons, as if the universe was breathing them back and forth.

I could hear King's voice. He was yelling my name. I'd never heard him yell like that before.