...but the story of the skull and how it came to lay where it was, as it was is a tragic story.

The skull was very, very old. Found covered in grass and weeds up against an old mossy stone wall. The grass on the property was overgrown and vegetation had overtaken the buildings and whatever remained of the fences. Trees now growing all around the once plain landscape. Though nature had taken back this land, it was easy to tell what the remnants of the building was. An old cottage, with a stone base and wooden walls, though the walls were missing parts, the roof had collapsed almost completely and what wood you could see that peaked through the foliage was charred.

Before Kinder was an esk, she was a lamb skull, and before that, she was a lamb who lived on a quiet sheep farm. Back then this land wasn’t much of a forest, it was a big open plain, perfect for farming and raising cattle. Kinder was an excitable little lamb, playful and always frolicing around the meadows.

The people who owned the farm and lived in the quaint little cottage were a kind man and woman, just trying to make enough to get by. The man and woman were kind, and took good care of all of the sheep. Kinder was none the wiser to whatever was going on behind the scenes, but she did notice as the man and woman got more and more tense.

Their faces always scrunched up with stress and strange men kept coming by to visit. But that wasn’t any worry to the sheep or little lamb, Kinder. What Kinder didn’t know was the debt the man and woman were in, and the Baron of the land who was beginning to grow impatient waiting for his money.

One night, not long after the last visit from not one but three men this time, while all the sheep slept soundly in the barn, the smell of fire woke little Kinder. The crackling of fire and the rustling of the other sheep around her. More of the sheep woke and started to grow more panicked. The crackling sound of the fire was coming from close by, the cottage. But as the fire grew the flames began to lick at the sides of the barn until the wood there began to catch. As the heat in the barn grew, the panic in the sheep grew with it. Kinder, too began to panic, looking to her mother for guidance but her mother seemed too panicked to pay much mind.

Outside she could hear the yells of the strange men, and the screams of the man and woman. The screams of the man stopped allthough the womans cries continued as the voices of the strange men disappeared. The flames were now roaring around the sheep, parts of the roof preparing to collapse inward. The smell of burning wool filled the air and ash choked Kinder’s lungs. Panicked cries from the surrounding sheep as their wool started to catch. Just as Kinder thought she might suffocate on the thick, hot air, the doors to the barn flung open. The woman.

The sheep began rushing out, panicked and running over Kinder, stepping on her back and her legs as they tried to escape the fire. Kinder tried to get up to run out, too but as she did, another hoof was on her back, pushing her into the ground. Another and another, the air left her and the air she tried to take back into her lungs filled with ash. The roof began to fall in pieces of burning wood all around her.

The woman managed to free most of the sheep, but those injured in the panic, including Kinder, were unable to escape in time as the roof collapsed completely over them. The man had been killed by the Baron and his home burned. The woman was left, her and her sheep, the ones that she could save from the fire, all that was left of that little farm.

We know not where the woman and the remaining sheep went off to after that night, but the burning home was abandoned. The fire eventually fizzling out after a few days on its own and leaving only ash and parts of the cottage still in tact. Kinder’s body, at this point, mostly ash and bone fragments due to the heat of the fire. Though her skull remained, almost as if it wasn’t touched at all by any ash or fire, resting beside the remnants of the stone foundation of the cottage.

Many many years passed before her skull was found, bleached by the sun and mostly unscathed. The rest of the bone fragments had been dispersed over the years, some used as nesting by birds or just blown and buried away by nature.The skull lay, partially submerged in the dirt until one day, an esk stumbled upon it.

Curious as to the story behind this small white skull all alone beside the burnt, broken cottage. Kinder was transformed. Though none of her memories remained. She was confused as to her belonging and purpose as an Esk. Her sense of self absent as she stretched her new body and as flames seemed to roar in her eyes. Who was she, and what wa she created for?