Zuza's Blog Post

‘Of Times Forgotten and Remembered’ - Zuza Jevremovic

Not too long ago, in a time which, but for the gap of a single generation, would still have been present, there dwelt in the woods an old marten. He was known to the local children as Briscoe, and in his boredom he would declare it his birthday and invite them to his cabin for a drink. Often it was Meles who went, for he knew the old beast could work wonders. He had lost the front axle of his old wagon once, and been unable to locate it despite his olfactory abilities. But when he visited Briscoe that evening, the marten had taken a timeworn chest from the back room and removed from within the lost axle. In his later years, Meles recounted the tale to his cubs, who listened enraptured. “I don’t suppose he’s around anymore, though,” muttered his son when the story had finished. “One wouldn’t think,” Meles replied. But it was hard to know with Briscoe.

In an age far more distant in history, tethered to the present by Mammals’ oral tradition, a badger named Brokkos roamed the countryside. Whether he was the substance of legends or legends were the substance of him was knowledge lost to beast, but hero or not, he managed to survive in memory, which was more than could be said for most of his contemporaries. And even if this memory persisted mainly among badgers, it spread itself as stories were told and the name of Brokkos was bestowed occasionally upon cubs. A fate like Brokkos’ was yearned for by all beasts, and so one day a young badger bearing his name carved a word on a tree and hoped someone might see it.

Far, far back, when the world was sundered into isolated fragments and each land was wary of its neighbors, a gharial waltzed into the public eye with a smile for all and a head full of questions. When asked whence he came, he said only from the world; he belonged at once to no realm and to all of them. Some claimed he had been sent over the great ocean from a mysterious land across the globe; others said he had risen from a vast maze of caverns depths below ground. And then there were some who insisted he had descended from the very stars themselves, for it was, eventually, thither he returned. Dawn had met him in the early years, before his public emergence, and she said he had spoken, in those days, of a salamander and a coelacanth. Perhaps, then, one of them knew whence he’d come.

And then there was a time even earlier, a time before Brokkos and Gavialis, before stories written and oral, before history and civilization. There existed no records of it, but it surely must have happened, having shaped the future so. In the days of the Primitives, someone- or multiple someones, all thinking individually- asked questions that had never been asked before. They were not questions of food or predators, of family or dwelling place, but more questions of “Who am I?” and “Why is the world the way it is?” The latter, so all-encompassing, was left to engage posterity until the end of the time, but for the former, the answer must have at some point been decided to be ‘Beast’. And yet, the precise meaning of this answer was often pondered by future generations, which wondered what defined that word and whether anyone had ever actually known in the past (for things had been simpler in the early days). 

But perhaps there exists something in the minds of beasts, of Amniotes and Amphibians alike, something like a kiwi’s wing or a whale’s hip, hidden beneath the surface and forgotten for what it once was. Something to remind all of who they used to be and who they still inherently are. And perhaps sometimes this thing blinks in the darkness and wakes briefly from hibernation, so that one may understand, if only for a moment, what it means to be Beast.