I was about nine or ten when they found me living in the Pine Barrens. No one is sure, since I don't remember anything before the Barrens.

I do know I had been living in the Barrens for a few years before I was brought out. Part of that time I lived with an old hermit woman I called "Grandmother," although she said we were not really related.

She said she found me wandering through the woods, dazed, hungry, and barely alive. She took me in and nursed me back to health, despite having come to the Pine Barrens to be totally alone.

She was an artist who had come to the desolate Barrens, to an old house her father once owned, to be alone and concentrate on her craft. Her old abandoned car sat out behind the shack she lived in, filled with paints, canvases, and all the other supplies she could cram into it before coming to the woods.

Barren Soul is dedicated to Grandmother, who took me in, nurtured, educated, and loved me. She will be with me forever.

Barren Soul, by Roman Bern - available soon!