COUNTING SHEEP

ANDERSON SHAY

PART 1 THE MUTANT

>/run hello.exe = livestockOS [unit00]

>...

>/return_livestockOS [unit00]

>”Hello”

>{Date = 2091.7.21.8:00

>Inventory=199}

One hundred and ninety-nine sheep; there should be two hundred. This was a problem. The flock was clumped across a delicious green slope in the company highlands. The sky was blue and clear but for a few small clouds as white and puffy as the sheep below. Their shepherd stood among them, aluminum crook in hand, counting manually. Each sheep had a tag implanted at birth. The shepherd’s internal database pinged the tags and provided an automatic count every four hours. If the number wasn’t what it was supposed to be then a manual recount was required.

The recount confirmed it: one of the sheep was missing. Forty-two lambs. Ninety-eight ewes. Fifty-nine rams—should be sixty. The culprit was serial number #170621R. It was strange for a ram to be missing. Usually it was the lambs who wandered off. Still, it had to be retrieved.

The shepherd was a robot—an android, technically speaking, though its design was more skeletal. Its head was skull-shaped and the conduit that connected its torso to its pelvis resembled a spinal column. But it also had arms and legs and the sheep didn’t seem to notice or mind that the shepherd wasn’t a human. Its body was nickel-plated and weather resistant, though it wore a hooded poncho made of plain brown wool. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but the shepherd’s owner thought the added layer of protection might prevent a little wear and tear.

The shepherd was an agrarian model, a livestock unit specifically, one of twenty belonging to the same owner. Its serial number ended in 00, so its owner called it Zed.

Zed shifted its poncho to the side and a sphere of metal lifted off its back and rose high into the air where it hovered. This was a proximity satellite, called a proxy in shorthand. It was capable of scanning inventory tags and local events like weather and topography within ten square kilometers. The proxy took several long moments to boot up—too long. Perhaps there would be a software update and some maintenance at the end of this grazing season. Once the proxy finished booting, it synced with the shepherd and they became one. Red dots swirled across its surface and Zed received a lidar image of the surrounding area. Then it pinged #170621R’s location. It was only two kilometers north. That was well within range for retrieval.

The shepherd planted its crook in the ground and twisted a segment of the shaft. A melody began to play and the flock gathered around the crook as they had learned to do since birth. Zed produced a black metal spike from its thigh. The spike was sixty centimeters with three grooves at the top. The spike was planted firmly in the ground just beyond the huddle of sheep. The grooves began to glow red. Five more spikes were planted around the flock, and they too began to glow red. The laser pen was online. If anything crossed the boundary an aggressive alarm would sound and the shepherd would be alerted. If it was a sheep, its tag would begin to vibrate harder and harder the farther away it got. It was supposedly painless but highly uncomfortable.

Zed retrieved its crook (the sheep protested at the end of the melody) and set off northeast, climbing the slope in the direction of #070621R’s location. Zed paused at the crest of the rise to confirm the flock was secure. They had formed a soft white hexagon on the green slope. The clear sky above and verdant valley below formed a beautiful scene. To a human it would have been a pastoral vista; to Zed it was simply Sector 7R.

The northeast edge of the company’s territory spanned a craggy mountain range that had been worn down into a series of spriggy monadnocks that divided the highlands from the cultivated plains.

Zed neared #170621R’s location atop a peak shaped like a table of dark gray bedrock. Scrub and moss grew within the bedrock cracks. At the top of the monadnock was a panoramic view of patchwork farmland with gray-blue veins of embedded aqueducts tracing their borders.

A mega-harvester dominated the landscape, fretting over the crops like a great robotic spider weaving its web. Two immense cylinders adorned its thorax, shaped like the cooling towers of a nuclear plant. As Zed watched, they produced a series of heavy white clouds, a byproduct of its cooling system. The pockets of dense hyper-humidity descended to ground level and billowed across the field, providing a dozen acres of crops with essential moisture. The mega-harvesters were masterpieces of carbon-negative engineering, but each one cost as much as any city to build and maintain.

The peak was twice-stepped and ended in a sheer precipice. The errant ram was on the lowest step, not far from the drop. And he was not alone.

#070621R had encountered a mutant. Wild beasts still roamed the region and the latent radiation wreaked havoc on their genes. Birth rates were drastically lower in every ecosystem, but sometimes they gave birth to mutants. This specimen might have been a healthy ram in another age. It was nearly two meters tall at the withers. Its musculature was overdeveloped, almost tumorous around its shoulders. It boasted an impressive mantel, two pairs of twice-spiraled horns, and an extra, blunt horn on the right side. There were similar growths all over its body, like bony armor.

The ram and the mutant sized each other up. It would not be a close match. The ram was prematurely rutting and its hormone-addled brain blinded it to the danger it was in. The mutant was nearly three times its size and much more aggressive.

The ram suddenly lurched forward on its hind legs, chin tucked, and brought its horns to bear on the mutant with a mighty knock that resonated on the mountaintop. The ram backed up without breaking eye contact, preparing for another charge. The mutant tossed its head and pounded its front hooves on the bedrock. It was ready to attack and it might not stop until the ram was dead.

The shepherd’s responsibilities were clear. The ram was company property and must be protected, but Zed could not attack the mutant. As an agrarian model, Zed had no weapons and it could not use them if it did. That would be against the protocols installed by the company before Zed had even been leased.

Protocol 1: The unit must cause no direct injury to any organic being, through action or
inaction.

Protocol 2: The unit must preserve the existence and safety of company property, living and
otherwise.

Protocol 3: The unit must preserve its own existence and function.

These protocols were prioritized. Protocol 2 could be ignored if it conflicted with Protocol 1 and Protocol 3 could be ignored if it conflicted with Protocols 1 or 2. These protocols were part of its base programming. It could not break these rules any more than a human could break the rules of physics.

The proxy was still hovering ten meters in the air above. Zed activated alarm mode and the proxy began flashing bright lights and spinning. The shepherd’s crook began to emit a high-volume siren. Zed also opened its solar panels and bristled. They were only intended to augment the shepherd’s battery but when the panels fully opened, the effect was like a bird or a cat puffing itself up.

The shepherd appeared larger, but that did not scare the mutant off. It only saw a bigger challenge. Zed had its full attention.

The beast was suddenly on its hind legs, tilting headlong toward the shepherd. Zed absorbed the blow with its left arm. A wall of bulging horns slammed harmlessly against its hand. Zed took a step back to compensate for the mutant’s force. It must not let the animal hurt itself. Protocol 2: the unit must cause no direct injury, through action or inaction.

The mutant marched backward, preparing for another hit, only for little #70612R to charge head first into its hindquarters. It amounted to little more than a bump for the mutant. The mutant spun head first and knocked the ram on its horns.

The force of the blow drove the ram to the ground. It bleated weakly then shambled to its feet and away, towards the precipice. The little ram had the wherewithal to turn its body sidelong to the mutant, a sign of deference. The mutant had won, but it was not done. It would not be until the challenger was dead.

The shepherd inserted itself between the rearing mutant and the ram. It held up its left hand. The mutant went berserk. It hammered its horns against Zed’s outstretched hand, over and over, chuffing with each hit. The force of the blows did nothing to Zed, perhaps the finish on its palm would be scratched. But all that energy had to go somewhere. Its feet were sinking deeper into the ground with every hit. Zed’s metal body was dense and heavy, more solid than whatever material was beneath it. Its body was a chisel and the mutant a hammer.

#070621R sensed the shift and, in a heretofore unseen display of self preservation, bounded away from the collapsing precipice. The mutant however was senseless with rage. It would not stop—must not stop—until its opponent was utterly destroyed. But this creature of black metal and brown wool refused to yield. It refused to be destroyed. So the mutant hammered and hammered until the ground gave way and they both fell.

The fall was long and there was nothing but uneven rocks below. The mutant’s tumor-riddled body broke against the mountain. The shepherd survived.

It had suffered some minor cosmetic damage to its plating, fifteen centimeters of abrasions to its face and chest. Its left arm was a mangled, oily mess. Zed had used it to break its fall, an instant calculation with predetermined success.

The shepherd observed its surroundings. They had landed on a rocky outcropping. There was still a long drop to the plains. It might not have survived if it had fallen that far. There was nothing for it in that direction, just the cultivated lands and the mega-harvester on the horizon.. There was no other way but back up the way it came.

The climb was easy, even with one functioning arm. Calculating where to drive its metal hand and feet for purchase in the rock was trivial. It took less than a half hour for Zed to reach the newly formed ledge from where it had fallen.

The shepherd lifted his head over the ledge and came eye to eye with the ram. It bounced off its front hooves and planted a weak headbutt against the shepherd’s head. They held eye contact for a moment, Zed’s orbitals with their faint blue glow, and the ram’s slot-shaped pupils, black and vapid and haughty, as if to say, this was all your fault.

It was late in the day and near dark when Zed returned to the flock with the delinquent. The shepherd deactivated the laser pen, returning the nodes to the slots in its legs. The sheep seemed relieved as they spilled out over the slope, bleating happily. #070621R disappeared right back into the flock as if it had never left.

It was past time for the end of day procedure and the sheep knew it. The shepherd’s crook played its melody and the flock gathered around. One by one, Zed inspected each sheep. Eyes, ears, hooves, and snouts were checked for signs of illness or injury. The shepherd used its hands to search beneath their wool for incipient tumors. Ambient radiation levels were mild but there was still plenty of contamination in the topsoil. Once each sheep was inspected it was fed a large pill. Most of them received a large, delicious nutrient pill. Some of them received a chemo-pill to combat an excess of radiation.

The sheep seemed to enjoy the nightly routine. The inspection felt like a good rub down and even if the pill was bitter and foul tasting sometimes, it was delicious more often than not.

The press of a button ended the crook’s melody with a seven-note chime that told the sheep it was time to sleep. The churn of woolly bodies turned into mounds of white upon the grass, like a pasture of clouds. Again, a human shepherd might have been enchanted by the scene. The sky was clear and the white-spotted field seemed to glow ethereal beneath the light of the stars and scarred moon. But Zed’s orbitals were dim as it processed data internally. It was busy updating and compiling its databases so that it could upload the results to the owner’s server.

Once that was done, the shepherd assessed its left arm. The fall had rendered it nonfunctional. Repair was not possible. The arm was partially detached and the weight of it was causing minor but significant stress to its remaining connections. Zed removed the arm, then adjusted its poncho to cover the exposed joint.

It would include an update of its own status in the morning report. There was nothing left but to count sheep.

PART 2 THE HUMANS

>/run hello.exe = livestockOS [unit00]

>...

>/return_livestockOS [unit00]

>”Hello”

>{Date = 2091.8.12.8:00

>Inventory=197}

It had happened again. A dam and two of her lambs had gone missing in the night, and so soon after the incident with the mutant.

The shepherd constructed the laser pen while the proxy was sent into the air to scan the area. The delinquents’ locations were pinged. They were six kilometers away, just at the edge of the maximum allowed retrieval range. All three tags were close together and stationary. It was not strange for two lambs to stay so close to their dam. It was strange that the trio had wandered so far off.

A running robot, at least one shaped like Zed, could be a strange sight. Humans rely on the natural elasticity of the muscles resulting in a springing step. A robot like Zed was able to rely on mathematical models for conveying oneself as quickly as possible, resulting in a rapid shuffling motion where the feet remained close to the ground. Its arms did not need to pump for balance; its internal gyroscopes and actuators could compensate just fine. Much of its weight was in the processors located in its chest and head, so it would compact its spine and neck to lower its center of gravity. It looked bizarre but was very efficient.

Robots came in many shapes and sizes. There were even more efficient designs to specifically fill Zed’s agricultural role, but research showed that livestock and human individuals responded better to humanoid designs. Non-humanoid robots were susceptible to a remarkable twenty-five percent increase in vandalism and theft. The numbers were even higher for robots employed in security roles.

Zed covered the six kilometers in around a quarter of an hour. However, it did not find three sheep. It found a column of gray smoke above a smoldering fire. Two of the tags were in the ashes, their amber lights flashing within the cinders. They had been removed by knife. The third tag was on the ground beside a nearby boulder where they had butchered one of the lambs for its meat.

The shepherd entered tracking mode immediately. Its face changed first. Its orbitals expanded to improve its field of vision and the sensor array projected forward like a snout. It contained sophisticated olfactory sensors along with many gauges and meters, all at the most forward part of its body to avoid self-interference. Its neck lengthened and its spine shortened. Its pelvis rotated and its knees reversed. It lowered its body so that it stood on all three limbs. It could easily compensate for its missing left arm. The shepherd’s tracking mode was certainly more canine than human. It only took a few moments to gather a substantial amount of data from its immediate surroundings.

The analysis was almost instantaneous. Three sheep. Three humans—two males, one female. A vehicle. Fuel emissions. Blood. Fire. Meat. Ash. Bone. Urine. Vomit.

Zed was able to reconstruct what happened quickly. The humans had parked a vehicle at this spot in the middle of the night. They approached the sleeping flock on foot and stole three sheep, one each. They had muzzled and leashed them, then led them here. The legal ramifications for stealing livestock were harsh in corponations. Only the most desperate would even attempt it. They must have been near starvation. The humans butchered one of the lambs and cooked its meat in the fire. One of the males over ate and vomited later. A rich meal could do that to a human who has not eaten substantially in a long time. They discovered the tags at some point and removed them from the other two sheep before loading them into the vehicle and fleeing. Both males had urinated to extinguish the fire. There were trace amounts of lead in their urine. They were drinking from a contaminated water source, living off the grid most likely.

The shepherd began to run. The thieves were not difficult to track. Between all the biological material left behind and the vehicle’s dirty emissions, their trail practically glowed like a beacon to Zed’s sensors.

The vehicle tracks led Zed through the hills for nearly a kilometer before it entered a large stream with scrubby banks full of polished rocks. They had hoped to lose their scent in the running water—a naive adherence to a trope from the previous century. It might even have worked on an organic hunting dog, but Zed’s complex orbitals could project the vehicle’s impact on the riverbed, the unnatural way the rocks had shifted, the recently disturbed silt. It ran upstream until it located the vehicle’s exit point on the other side. The tire-churned bank, the trail of water, the trace amounts of soot, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide made it all too easy.

Zed had reason to pause within two kilometers of the stream. It had reached the precise border of Plant-Am territory. It paused long enough to check its bycode, nearly a terabyte of rich text documents. It took several seconds to confirm that locating and retrieving the remaining sheep would be not only legal but the required course of action. It would have gone faster with plain text documents but complaining was not in Zed’s programming.

The proprietary, lab-modified grass of Plant-Am’s highlands thinned out quickly past the border, leaving behind scrub and dry earth. Zed followed the thieves’ vehicle across a rocky hinterland. There were no signs of synthetic or organic life beyond the few insects that refused to go extinct in the face of a local ecological collapse. These lands were dead.

Nor were there any artificial structures until a radio tower entered visual distance. It was half collapsed and seemingly abandoned. Rust-moss drooped from the holes it had made in the radio dish. A quarter of the structural beams had rusted through and sheared away over time. The tower would surely collapse at some point within the next twenty years.

At the bottom of the decaying tower was a shack. It was little more than a corrugated box covered in rust. A sudden hot breeze made the loose tin roof quiver. A four-wheeled vehicle was parked just beside the hovel. It was nothing more than a frame on wheels with an old-modded combustion engine. Instead of seats, it had something vaguely resembling a crane bucket welded between the axles. It was full of the humans’ biological traces. There was even a tuft of wool snagged on a jag.

Zed returned to its bipedal shepherd mode, because humans were less responsive to non-humanoid robots. The shack had a thin aluminum door hanging at an angle on a single hinge. Zed gently pushed the door and it swung open, squealing and vibrating. It was dark inside.

The shepherd brightened its orbitals to spotlight levels. Its beams of light revealed three humans huddled within a dingy, barren shed. The sheep were leashed to a cleat that had been hammered into the ground. The female human was sitting on an overturned crate beside the dam, collecting her milk in a pail. The two males were squatting on either side of a generator that had seen better days. All three were haggard and unbathed. They wore layers of ratty clothing that had been torn and stained by rough living.

The shepherd scanned each of them. No weapons. Minimum education. No employment. No service history. Only a few medical records, all from the WHO-Universal service. Several diseases. Cumulative radiation sickness. They had nothing worth taking in court and the healthcare required if they were taken into custody would be too costly. In corporate terms, they were non-persons. In other words, these humans were ineligible for litigation or even arrest. Zed’s viable options had become much narrower.

“These sheep are the property of Plant-Am and its subsidiaries. Surrender the stolen property or face consequences.”

One of the males stood up. “Come on. It’s two sheep. Say they died of sickness or got killed by mutants.”

“You’re wasting your time. Synths can’t bend the rules,” said the other male.

“Right. No sense, only circuits,” muttered the first male. It was a common phrase among the anti-automation movement. “Just update your inventory and move on, synth. It’s not worth it.”

Zed repeated itself. “Surrender the stolen property or face consequences.”

The female spoke. “You can’t reason with a synth! Let’s just give them back before it makes trouble.”

“We need these sheep more than they do. Give them back now and I promise you we won’t find anything else.”

“I’d rather take my chances than get slagged by a synth.”

The first male jabbed an accusatory finger towards Zed. “It can’t do nothing. We’re outside of Plant-Am’s borders. We’re in Aquifree territory and they don’t have extradition for minor theft. And taking three sheep is minor theft! It’s not even worth the hassle for your overlords!”

Zed repeated itself for a third time. “Surrender the stolen property or face consequences.”

The first male snatched a variating wrench from near his feet. Zed processed this instantly but did not react. “What consequences? Can’t sue us. Can’t arrest us. Can’t hurt us, right? It’s in their code. Right?” The first male brandished the wrench at Zed. “You can’t touch, can you? It’s against your, uh, protocols and you gotta follow them.”

The second male stood and grabbed the first male’s arm. “Ian. Come on, man. Let it go.”

His grip was shaken off. The human named Ian used the wrench to lift the corner of Zed’s poncho. “Look at this thing. It’s harmless. It’s a farm-bot. Maybe we can scrap it for money. Synths aren’t cheap. Although maybe this one is. Looks like it’s missing an arm.” The male knocked the wrench on Zed’s chestplate as if it were a door.

Zed’s orbitals—still in spotlight mode—turned red.

PART 3 THE WOLVES

>/auto_run alert.exe

>/database/livestock_S

> !Inventory Alert! = headcount/livestockOS_unit00

>Date = 2090.6.18.22:00

>Inventory=170

>Inventory=164

>Inventory=161

>Inventory=158

It was the dead of night and the flock was panicking. The shepherd heard a wolf bark and turned ninety degrees to the right. Its spotlights flashed over a pair of wolves as dark as shadows as they took down a screaming ewe.

The sounds were easy to isolate with the shepherd’s finely attuned audio receivers. The terrified bleating of the flock, the mewling juveniles. The drumming of hooves on grass. The growls and barks of the nearly seventy wolves on the attack.

Zed pulled its wool poncho aside and activated its alarm mode. The proxy flew ten meters in the air and began flashing its brilliant lights and spinning. The shepherd’s crook began to emit a high-volume siren. The wolves were not deterred.

The shepherd heard a distorted growl and turned to see an immense mutant wolf approaching, teeth bared. It was twice as large as any other wolf in the pack. This was without a doubt the alpha of the super pack. Its snout was blunt and full of too many teeth and a cleft palate that made its every breath slaver. Its huge bottom fangs protruded from like tusks. Saliva mixed with blood dripped from its matted jaws. Its eyes were as black as its pupils, glassy dark spheres like the eyes of a shark.

The alpha lowered its head and bared its teeth at the shepherd. The crest of wiry fur that grew along its tumorous back bristled.

Zed vented its cooling components and a veil of condensation filled the air between them. Zed fled to protect itself as required by Protocol 3.

The shepherd ran with the sheep as the super pack harried their flanks, corralling them. They stopped short at the foot of a stony bluff. Zed came up behind them. The embankments on either side of the bluff were steep enough to prevent a mass escape in either direction. The wolves had successfully cornered them.

Zed’s head emitted a strange dial tone and suddenly his audio receivers and orbitals were being shared to the network via the proxy. Farmer Musk had assumed control.

“What the hell is happening out there? I’m losing inventory left and right!” It was a rhetorical question. In passenger mode, Musk could see and hear everything Zed could through his own computer screen.

Zed’s owner was a subsidiary farmer named Johanes Musk. His family, and many others, had once claimed ownership of the land he farmed before one of the corponations had purchased their government and divided up the land under the pretense of humanitarian needs in the midst of an ongoing global crisis. They then leased the land back to the farmers under the condition that they follow company guidelines, meet company standards and quotes, and used company-approved equipment—which, of course, they would be leased at market price.

The wolves surrounded the shepherd and its flock and began to press forward. Their eyes reflected Zed’s lights at the edge of the darkness. Something big appeared in the darkness; the wolves parted for it without looking away from the flock. The alpha stalked forward, its black eyes on Zed.

“Sweet hell, look at the size of that thing,” said Musk. “This must be the Highland Super Pack. They won’t believe it. Computer, trim clip to the last fifteen seconds and upload to admin drive.'' The mutant barked suddenly, loosing a spray of spittle that seemed to shimmer in the light. The bark was a deep, distorted sound that made the flock tremble. They bleated in fear. That spurred other wolves to bark. They stepped forward one by one, tension building.

“I can’t afford this shit. And I sure as hell can’t afford to replace another livestock unit.” There was a pause as Musk accessed Zed’s root menu.

Livestock units were expensive and had a habit of getting destroyed because of their protocols. Situations like the one Zed faced were not uncommon. Mutants, predators, scavengers, rival corporate mercenaries, climate events—all of them happened regularly and sometimes ended with a scrapped livestock unit that cost thousands in fees to warranty or replace, not including the steep penalty of having a unit destroyed during the contract term. So Musk, who had studied software engineering before resigning himself to the gravity of the family farm and the shackles of corporate servitude, made a small edit. A simple change to Zed’s base code. Nothing added or deleted. Musk simply switched the order of the protocols so that their priority had changed. They now read:

Protocol 1: The unit must preserve the existence and safety of company property, living and
otherwise.

Protocol 2: The unit must preserve its own existence and function.

Protocol 3: The unit must cause no direct injury to any organic being, through action or
inaction.

Protocol 3 could be ignored if it conflicted with Protocols 1 or 2. Musk relinquished control to Zed, though it was certain he would still be monitoring the situation. Zed had a new function chain. The order of protocols was clear and unquestionable.

The proxy ended its alarm function. It instead took up the spotlight mode itself, illuminating the super pack with a halogen-bright cone of light from above. The wolves flinched from the sharp light. The shepherd’s crook silenced as it took it on both hands.

The pack hesitated, trying to gauge the sudden change. The alpha, however, did not hesitate. It lunged forward, jaws open. The shepherd’s crook flashed through the air. When Zed stepped back, the alpha was pinned to the ground through its skull. It happened so quickly that its ribs still heaved with its last dying breaths. It even managed to whine for a moment.

Zed stepped forward and another wolf attacked. It snatched its jaws at the shepherd’s leg, hoping to bring it down to the ground where it could be killed more easily. Zed reached down and crushed the beast’s spine with one hand. Its jaws went slack and it slumped to the ground.

More wolves attacked but only a few. The others began to flee from the place where wolves were dying. The hunt had gone wrong. The super pack was meant to be strong but the wind had turned against them. Zed did not let them flee freely. As long as this super pack existed, even without their mutant leader, they would be a threat to company property, living or otherwise. Protocol 2 (formerly Protocol 1) required a culling.

Wolves were a vital part of the ecosystem. There was plenty of data on the consequences of an empty ecological niche. By the time Zed had finished its brutal task, seventy-nine percent of the super pack had been eliminated. What remained could be considered a sustainably-sized pack for this region.

PART 4 THE SHEPHERD

>/run hello.exe = livestockOS [unit00]

>...

>/return_livestockOS [unit00]

>”Hello”

>{Date = 2091.8.12.23:00

>Inventory=199}

Zed returned late that night with the dam and her surviving lamb in tow. The shepherd had used the leashes placed on them by the humans to lead them back to the flock. When it released them they skittered away, eager to rejoin the flock.

The shepherd deactivated the laser pen. The sheep did not flee the barrier like they had before. It was late and many of the sheep had already laid down. Some of those that were awake looked at the shepherd warily.

It was late, but the nightly routine still needed to be completed. The sheep had to be examined and fed their pills. Robots did not have wants or desires; they could not have feelings, nor was there weariness or exhaustion. Zed did what needed to be done.

The crook was planted in the ground and its handle was twisted so that the melody that summoned the sheep began to play. They rose slowly and gathered in a huddle, wool to wool, the way sheep do, but they did not come to the shepherd the way they usually do. They stood in a wary mass, bleating softly. It was a dark, starless night and they seemed to shuffle among themselves, each vying to be unseen beyond the edge of Zed’s light.

The shepherd stepped forward and they recoiled as one, shying away from the scent of blood.

Zachariah Miller

Date = 2021.7.30