The first thing I can recall was not my sister's scream, or my mother feinting at the fire; but instead I remember  the pungent odor of whisker-fish I had caught. It was the first one I was able to catch with my bare hands, and wasn't big enough to feed my sister for one meal, but it had this peculiar stench about it, as if this smell alone could foretell the fates, as if it alone knew what the future held and how dark our days were about to come...

...I looked up in the direction my sister was pointing. My brother was being carried by my father, only it wasn't my brother. It was a bloody, twisted, shape of my brother. As my father crossed our stream, not more than fifteen feet in front of me, carrying his eldest son's mangled body, he collapsed. The next moments are relived as a blur of time and action. I was running over to help him; my sister was coming over with tears in her eyes; father was telling us to tend to our brother, that his wounds were nothing. I managed to take off my shirt and wrap it around father's head. My sister had my brother's arm around her neck and was dragging him back to the house over her back. I was doing the same with father, trying not to notice the overwhelming smell. It was unlike anything I had noticed before, some combination of decaying flesh and burnt hair. When I managed to get father to his bed, my sister had managed to rouse mother and she was set into action. She had my sister preparing hot water for the wounds, I was told to gather herbs, and she was doing her best to tend to my father and brother's wounds. After getting all of the herbs I could find, I rode our best horse into the valley to summon the town doctor...