I had been unable to say goodbye to my master. We had argued about money and things got a little messy. He’d taught me everything I knew about Kara-Doo; a mixture, a jumble of the Chinese martial arts and West African Voodoo, the type still practiced in Haiti today. With some animal sacrifice and some hallucinogens thrown in for terror and fun respectively. The sheep was the revered animal of the Kara-Doo, but was feasted on regularly as the farm we lived on was predominantly sheep based.

I’d left the tumbledown farm in Cwm years before and never returned, I point blank refuse to go back. Some of my most treasured possessions i’d left in one of the cells where we slept, items which would be really useful in the practice of Kara-Doo.  But since I hadn’t suffered any ill effects, well none more than any normal devotee would suffer on a day to day basis, I assumed he had forgiven me. It would be in line with the teachings to forgive, but never to forget. And so to return at this point in my life seemed frivolous and served no purpose. Besides I had a bar to run, it would be fair to say I’d let myself go.

The master sat on a fallen tree, his eremitic penance nearly over, in front of him was the vanquished sheep, he had sat there eating berries, nuts and seeds drinking rainwater from the maple leaves around him as he watched the sheep decay in front of his eyes, only the scavenging birds and carnivorous insects for company. He fought with a few foxes and scare off some badgers, they wouldn’t be back while the Kara-Doo master lingered. His face covered in the skin of the sheep’s face, the transformation into Sheep Master at an early but unstoppable stage, he didn’t think about the consequences of giving in.