He lay on the rock then and dreamed, not knowing if the dream was memory or the memory a dream, a dream of milk and straw and warmth and slices of sunshine in the high rafters.

His early life had been a certainty of earthy smells, sounds of chewing and of tails that swished against the summer flies that came in with the sunshine.

He lay and watched them dancing, laid down his big broad back against the straw and watched as they moved up, and down in the dream where it was warm and roared.

He roared for the calf he wasn’t and for the man he could never be. He roared for horns and hands with nails too thick to cut and for a tail that never flicked a fly.

He roared against the cavecold walls and crops of stalactites and stones. He roared for sky and straw and mothers milk, for other hearts around him and for silence.

Always there that drip-drip-drip. Always dripping always there, the drip-drip-drip was landing in the dream and splashing him with the here and now.

He roared again and this time heard the muffled scream, the sob and shuffled silence.

He knew the way. They didn’t and that was that.