I stayed with him in the clearing long after he was dead, sitting with his body for what must have been hours as the sun went down the forest grew gradually darker. I'd gone and retrieved the woman when it was still light and had laid their bodies side by side in their shelter. Seeing them together, even lifeless, bloodless, stirred strange feelings in me. What they'd shared . . . . I didn't have a word for it but it was a feeling I knew. Somehow, impossibly, I knew what bound them together.

It felt almost wrong to leave them there, even with each other. I knew there was something I should do with them, just as I knew the song the man had whistled and the language that he spoke, but what needed to be done eluded me. The knowledge was in me, like I'd lived it, dreamed it all before, but the thoughts, the memories, the information I needed, were obscured by the smoke from the fire that bore me.

I eventually left the clearing, sliding the man's fire starter into my pocket. I didn't want to take it with me but I also didn't want to leave it behind. I knew in my soul that I could be lost to the fire, and it felt better to have it in my possession than anywhere else.

I took off through the forest at top speed, zigzagging at a run, breathing in and out periodically, smelling, letting my brain label, catalog, map everything. And while my mind was busy supplying information I never knew I'd forgotten, my thoughts were in the clearing, on the couple, and the feelings that they'd shared.

He'd said that she was his wife. I knew the feelings that went along with that title even if I didn't understand the connotations of the title itself. It felt . . . soft, but hard at the same time. Pleasant, soothing, like being surrounded by the cool night air after being engulfed in flames. That feeling I understood well. It felt desperate and fierce, both warm and hot at the same time. It was . . . overwhelming. All consuming. And very painful?

I scratched at the pain in my chest absently as I blurred past a black bear, barely sparing it a glance but noting the slightest tickle in my throat.

I had a feeling pain wasn't supposed to be a part of it, a part of this feeling. It didn't seem to go with the rest. But it was there, along with everything else, so maybe it was right. After all, what did I know, really?

I knew the feeling of the flames. That searing, burning feeling that I'd endured since the beginning of time was well ingrained. I knew that blood could put out the fire even though it didn't make sense that something so hot could douse the flames. I knew that it was delicious, the blood – salty, thick, metallic, hot – and that I'd go to the ends of the earth to find it. I'd go anywhere if it meant I didn't have to live with the fire anymore.

But past the blood, past the flames, I didn't know much of anything.

I explored the woods most of the night, thoughts on everything and nothing at all. I discovered dens of sleeping bears, rivers, two lakes, and deer, both in herds and on their own. I'd had an urge at one point to chase down a vicious looking feline my mind didn't know, but I resisted the urge easily and focused on my searching, my wandering. It was when I was wading into the second lake to examine a particularly spicy smelling stick that my brain finally supplied the word I'd been searching for all night without realizing I'd been looking. That feeling that had been taunting me, torturing me. It was love.

The word itself stopped me in my tracks, waist deep in the lake. I stood still, silent, not breathing, watching my stick slither away through the water. Snake, my brain supplied without prompting, but my mind had focused elsewhere by then.

Love.

I knew that word, I'd said that word, though I couldn't imagine when, or where, or what reason I would have had to utter it.

"Love." I said it aloud then, quietly to myself, trying it, tasting it. It felt familiar, right, like it'd said it a million times before, though I couldn't begin to fathom in what reality that would have been. All I remembered was the fire, and then the clearing, and I certainly hadn't loved in either of those places. Though I supposed the feeling of the blood smothering the fire that seared my throat came pretty damn close to love.

My lips twitched into a smile at that thought.

The feelings I'd had were right; once I had the word I knew it to my core. Everything from elation to devotion to desire to pain, they were all there, all a part of this love. It should have been wrong, discordant, those things shouldn't mesh, let alone well. But under the umbrella, under love, they did. Somehow, impossibly, they were one in the same. And I'd experienced it . . . maybe? Sometime . . . .

Frustration rushed through me quickly, followed instantly by fury, and I screamed -a horrifying shriek that was harsh and painful in the silence of the forest.

Why, why, why did this elude me? Why, why, why could I not remember who I'd loved, when I'd loved, and why it felt right for the word to pass my lips?

I knew so much without even considering it. I knew snake, bear, blood, wife. I knew how to make the fire starter spew fire, how to cure the burning in my throat, and how to take down a man twice my size. I knew which way it was to river one, how long it would take to get there at a run, and how far north I'd have to go to hit the tent where the couple were laying together dead. I knew these things, my brain retained and supplied all of these effortlessly, filling in the blanks even when I hadn't realized I'd known the answer to the question. So why couldn't I remember the one thing I felt nearly desperate to know?

I'd know love before, I was sure of it. Whether it was in dreams I'd had while I'd writhed in hell or in a life I'd lived before I'd burned I didn't know, but there must've been something before. There was no way love, deep, desperate love, could have existed in the fire, and there was no way I could know it, be able to feel it if hadn't lived it.

There was something before the fire, there simply had to be. Something that involved love and pain and grief and joy. It was something that was just out of reach, something I couldn't quite grasp. But I was determined to regain the memories, the dreams - one way or another.

Suddenly, unbidden, another memory burst forth and I knew what I was meant to do with the couple I'd left in the clearing. I pushed the anger, the hurt, the injustice to the back of my mind and was out of the water in a second, running through the woods so quickly I was dry after the first mile. It was close to dawn when I reached their campsite.

I buried them on top of each other in the same grave just after sunrise.