Her voice is the first thing he is aware of. Even still, it's a vague sort of awareness, for his brain cannot yet make sense of the information his senses are recieving. He doesn't know that the low, garbled sounds he hears are words, and neither does he know that he doesn't know this.

The feeling of helplessness as his cramped, wet body hits the baking earth is only an imprint of an imprint on his consciousness. When he breathes, he breathes not because he decides to, but because his body does it on his behalf. When he opens his eyes, he cannot marvel at the many blurred colors and shapes, because he does not know how. He doesn't know where he is or what he is, because he isn't capable of thinking about any of it.

Yet.

For now, it is his instincts - his nervous system - that is in charge. He shudders and heaves in hurried, sticky breaths, and he winces at the warm tongue that caresses him. Time is both endless and nonexistent in these moments, and come his first birthday he will remember none of it. Completely at his mother's mercy, he waits and continues to lay flat on his side as she washes him, as if there is something deep inside him that understands what she is doing and why she is doing it.

The strange sensation of her mouth on his body which at first had been strange is soon comforting. When it departs, he wants more. He needs more. Suddenly the grains of sand beneath his body are too hard, digging into the crevices of his soft, tiny body and irritating them like sandpaper. Overcome by the desire to follow the warmth - not the intangible warmth that resides all around him in the air, but the solid warmth, the living warmth - he slowly but surely struggles to stand.

Waves of dizziness crash into his brain as he wavers on unsteady legs high above the earth (or so it seems to him). Still he can see nothing but blurred shapes, so he blinks rapidly and bleats, calling The Warmth, as if asking her to help him. Help him with what, he could never say. His legs refuse to carry him anywhere, so he continues to stand and tremble as he slowly dries in the arid desert air.

Never once does he fall.