The Zibanti Chronicles : Prelude

[Zibanti 28]

An odd looking, maneless zebra sat writing in the dark, early hours of the morning. The cave in which he took shelter was lit by the feeble illumination from a stone bowl containing a chemical concoction of his own design. His quill flew across the page,trying desperately to save his memories to paper. Exhaustion etched itself across his face in haunted patches under his lavender eyes. The weight of his despair dragged at him, made all the heavier by the abuse he inflicted upon himself. He was filthy. His white coat and light gray stripes buried under grime, his black tail knotty,and matted. 

He knew, on some vague unconscious level, that he was dying.

 

Or, more accurately, that he was killing himself.

 

So he wrote.

 

He wrote to preserve a record of what had happened to he and his brother and maybe, just maybe, divest himself of the shame and torment. 

 

He wrote because he didn't know when the next lucid moment might come. He could smell the fungi at the back of the cave, taste the drink the he would make from it, feel the numbness it would bring. It was impossible to know how long each draught's effects might last, and if the next drink would kill him.

 

He put words to paper not caring about a cogent narrative. He followed a stream of consciousness formed of fatigue, and the ligering aftereffects of a half dozen other natural intoxicants, down into the depths of his memories.

 

"I am Zibanti," he quickly scrawled at the top of the page, "and this is my story."