First he cut off his ear and let his spirit leak out. It was black and viscous, and it dribbled slowly into a clay bowl. "Is it supposed to look like that?" The shaman stayed silent. Kalidas bowed to the old man. His body didn't feel too different. He looked back at the bowl when he stood back up. "What will you do with it?" The clay bowl was placed gently in his hands, like an offering. He held it tightly, staring down at the liquid. The thickness was the color, too, the blackest of blacks, solid, a void, no reflection. He was yearning to immerse himself in it, in the never ending. He ignored the shaman as he stitched his ear back on, not even giving a passing thought to the fact that he had cut it off himself with that very strange knife. The liquid, his spirit, cried out to him, howling...it held all the pain and emotion of his entire life, memories of the war, of loss. And then a glimmer. He peered closely at the liquid. A face, dark and twisted, it was his own looking back. He screamed but was unable to drop the bowl, unable to fling it across the room. It was his, he couldn't let go. His face was trembling, quaking. The shaman was done, he was motioning to the door. Kalidas nodded, not looking away from what he held in his hands. Payment done, things unlearned, his insides were purified of that toxicity that swam before him. He stepped outside and felt the air, balmy and thick, slide over his skin. He shivered, cold. His body was the same but he was different. He was fine now. Those specters that had kept him up all those nights were gone, his mind cleansed. The memories existed now only as shells, faint reminders that yes, something had happened, but those somethings were not very important. He made a decision. At the bank of the holy river, he poured the contents of the gray bowl slowly into the rushing waters before flinging the bowl into the dark of the night. He was proud of himself. He had taken out that rotten piece and he was cleansed. That pain that had settled like an unwelcome guest in his bowels, his chest, was gone.
"Ah," he breathed. He turned around.