He awoke gasping for air. It was dark, cramped, moist. All he knew was to dig, dig, dig, up, up, up. Eventually he reached the surface, the light blinding his eyes. He looked down at his hands, hands of stone and clay and flesh fused together like some horrible amalgam. And that was when he remembered, a word, deep within his subconscious, the word "golem." He looked above him and saw the vultures circling him. He remembered what they were called as well, buzzards, so he took that as his name. Buzzard, a creature of earth and flesh, living yet not. All that he could feel was the drive to walk—to walk far away, to the ends of the earth if necessary—to find that single image before he saw before he awoke, the boy with eyes like the night sky in a city shrouded in shadow. He looked around; he was in a secluded field, green waves of grass undulating around him. He felt something like an all-consuming fire point him in the direction of the city like, like, what was it called? Oh yes, a compass. So Buzzard took his first steps toward the city of shadows.
After leaving the clearing, he found a faded gray road that wound through the hills and followed it as one would follow a stream to the source. Along the highway to the city he saw signs reading "Lexington 55." The language made sense to him, yet he did not completely understand why, and the numbers kept getting smaller and smaller. He felt strange feelings as he walked, stoic and undisturbed. Something inside him cried "FOOD! FOOD!" so he scraped the bark off the trees and devoured it ravenously. Occasionally something loud and boisterous, a machine on wheels ("A car," he thought.) would zoom by, usually ejecting some sort of can or bottle as a projectile at him. These were but minor wounds for him, and he shrugged them off easily.
When the darkness came, he would lay down in the brush and rest, a fitful sleep, where he saw the eyes of the boy as deep and as dark as the night sky. The next day as he traveled, he found an emaciated dog before him chewing on roadkill like its wolf ancestors would have done on a deer thousands of years ago. As he approached, the dog ignored him, until—thirty feet away—its hairs bristled and it began to growl. Buzzard stared at him with sympathetic eyes, but only saw bestial hate return his glance. He took a step forward; it took a step back. For what seemed like days they stared at each other, until the canine finally turned and ran. Buzzard wondered what this meant; why would such a thing hate him? He pondered this for three more days, when he finally reached the city of shadows and saw the woman with the dark glasses.