Pìcaro was a broad man. Broad shoulders, broad arms, broad hands. His whole physique seemed to have been constructed. Very few people in the village where he lived could imagine him as a small babe, or even as a gangly teenager. He had been born huge, the village elders decided, probably a son of a god. It didn’t seem to bother him, so no one bothered him about it.
He seemed intelligent, too. He’d come from one of the other colonies further up the coast, and had suffered. It had been a game among the young women of the village to try and see Pìcaro naked until one of them saw his bare back, covered in thin, white scars. Suddenly, the game lost its appeal. Nobody mentioned it again.
         One day Pìcaro left. No one knew why, he just left the next day. The elders shook their heads and sighed. The harvests had been good these few years, and the extra manpower had been extremely useful. Nonetheless, they said, glancing at each other, it was perhaps a mercy he was gone. He had a lot of secrets, and it was better that they were away from here.

         Wood blazed, the crackling noise and choking smoke bringing the blacksmith back to reality. He coughed hard, trying to get rid of the ashes in his throat. Gasping for breath, he rushed into the square and plunged his head into the water trough. The water was warm, and had bits of ash floating in it, but he sucked it up as if his life depended on it.
         Sated for the moment, he leant back on his haunches, studying the leaping flames with the kind of detachment that is normally associated with death. His eyes panned unseeingly along the palisade, the flickering shapes in the flames reflecting in his eyes. His mind was free-floating, trying to reconnect itself, but he shut it out. He didn’t want to remember. He was perfectly content sitting here, looking at the fire, the flames, the people-
         His mind reconnected with an almost physical slap. The eyes staring down at him held him, squirming uncontrollably as he remembered-
-the shining form moving in the heat-
-the arrows hissing through the air-
-the woman and child folk screaming as nails pinned them to crosses-
-his own cowardly retreat into his smithy-
         Still the eyes held him, unblinkingly, unseeingly pinning him to the floor. Image after image rolled across his mind. His whole body shook as he relived the entire scene again. His mind saw the pictures while his eyes saw his family stare down at him, accusing him with their silence.
         He didn’t know how long the torture continued, but it must have stopped at some point, because he was awoken by the sense which is hereditary in all humans. It has been handed down from the beginnings of evolution, and goes something like this.

Predator before you. Don’t Move.