“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.” - Albert Schweitzer.

I am a hero. I’m a hero who saved a hairless’s life. I am a hero who grew up in the street, remain grateful to Cesus, and ought to transfer this goodwill to others. I am benevolent, compassionate, and altruistic. I am a Phoenix that comes from fire, I am Prometheus who stole the fire, I am…

Wait a second, where is my drug going? I remember I just found a cluster of locoweeds; did I just chew them all up within the time that the shadow of my shelter just moved a distance of my hoof? Heroes, like me, mean to deserve more of these delicacies, but that hairless even refuses to reserve even a single leaf from it! Every time Cesus gives me the oracle to find a cluster of locoweeds on the ground, the hairless always runs over here at full speed—kind of slow to me, though—and takes away all my weed, as it will kill me. God! That’s the locoweed! The lovely, beloved locoweed will only lead you to mental estrus and expand your imagination. A cluster of locoweeds won’t kill me. Then, he will touch my face with his front hoof, murmuring something that sounds like “Hallucinogenic” that I don’t understand at all. The hairless never fully learned how to speak, for which I take some responsibility for his failing in socialization as his hero and mentor.

Back to our business, where did I stop? The consequences of using locoweeds are the temporary loss of my memory. Oh, it’s the fire! Technically, I wasn’t born from the fire, but from a tower of rotten food and fallen materials that I can’t consume. This place is called “the trash pile”.

My first sight of the world is total black, along with the suffocation that a little newborn couldn’t bear. Luckily, I have the blessing of Cesus, so naturally I am stronger than the other creatures in the city. After I squeezed myself out of the darkness, the pungent smell hit my nose, wrinkling it like the smell of hairless, loyal pet dogs. Black sticky liquid flooded over my hoofs, making each step forward harder and harder. Luckily, I was saved by a bunch of good friends who were older than me. They taught me the way to live in the place they called “street”, including some places to find food and shelter, some helpful reactions toward events that happened on the street, and some tips that are extremely useful to save my life.

“The trash pile is your treasure chest. Overcome the garbage, and you will find food.”

“Underpasses and spaces under viaducts are your good friends; they provide shelters away from those junior hairlesses.”

“You want to know the reason we should hide from junior hairlesses? They are the ultimate devil in this world! They come near you without making any sound, attacking you from hell, or using a forked branch to launch rocks that aim right at your eyes! When you are attacked by a junior hairless, your life ends. You will become weak, blind, with a body full of wounds. Your wounds will start to decay, you will start bringing maggots, and then, you will die.”

These suggestions are really helpful because if you don’t obey them, there’s a significantly low chance of your survival in the street. When I was young, I was still bold and trying to fight with my fate, but I soon learned the words of Cesus that there is always a part of your life that you will never be able to change. I have seen loads of my partners smashed by those huge metal creatures with four round feet just because they want to fight with them for space and food. It is undoubtedly true that I am the most intelligent in the street, so as time passed by, it was eventually my turn to teach those newcomers the law on the street. Some of the rookies also come from the trash pile, but a steady increase in the number of new adults to our gang still exists. These adults are really familiar with the habits of the hairlesses; they are raised by them, but eventually abandoned by the hairlesses’ home due to their diseases. Hairlesses hate diseases. They taught me that us creatures blessed by Cesus are called cows, or at least that’s how these hairlesses called us. By the way, those hairlesses are the origin of everything in my life. They created the street, they created the trash pile, they are everywhere in our lives.

I always thought my life would be like this forever, with half-starvation and full of risk. But after one day, my life completely changed.

It was a cold day in the season where all the trees shed their skin, and the world turned to the color of the trash pile. The wind not just blew, it screamed the warning of a huge rainstorm. The sky was bruising into a deep purple, the color of the most common wound, and the great bellowing that brings the word of Cesus ran across the cloud. The long, thin flashing sticks - the tall, branched eyes the hairless used to see - flickered, but they are weak. Although they are strong for an instinct, they vanished during the time I blinked my eyes.

I was ambled on the street, my hooves knocked a song of the supreme son of Cesus. Even in this coldness, I felt the fire of Prometheus in my gut. The cold never bothered me at all.

Then, I saw them.

Two junior hairlesses. They were small, flexible, with the familiar smell of artificial saccharin that foreshadows the trouble. My mind flashed back to the bloody advice: the ultimate devils. They launch rocks from hell. I tried to squeeze myself into the size of the thinnest grass to hide from the evil eyes. I am a master of stealth, a true ghost in the street. But even a hero can be betrayed by a cracking leaf. It burst with a sound enough to push me toward death. The devils turned.

One of them raised a forked branch. I felt a sharp, stinging bite against my ribs, and another one right on my eye. My world went blurry. I am a phoenix, but even a phoenix feels the pain from a malicious junior hairless. Then it all happened as I was told. I felt everything, I expected the wound, the maggots, the decay, the death.

But Cesus must have some humor. A long flashing stick struck across the sky as I was going to be hit with the final shot. Indeed, a temporary strength is a strength. It scared the devils away. They soon ran away, panicked, like I was the envoy of hell. I scrambled away, my legs heavy like four burdensome logs, and dragged my wounded body toward the great shelter – the space under the viaduct.

By fate, in the damp dark, I found another hairless.

He was a large one, mature enough that it made me believe that he wouldn’t have any interest in playing with or hurting a stray cow. He wore the fabulous skin of a successful master, with the look of a creature that had never been to hunger or suffer. However, as I watched his soul through my good eye, I realized that he was suffering from the most enigmatic hairless disease. He was sitting in the dirt, his head tucked into his front hooves like a plucked pigeon trying to hide from the sun and the sky. I recognized the symptoms. He was a shadowed abyss. He had all the food in the world, yet he lacked the courage to chew on even a single blade of grass. He was leaking water from his eyes – a waste of hydration – and shaking. I realized that while I was bleeding from my skin, he was bleeding from his inside. We were both the victims of the street.

“Here, hairless,” I rumbled a calm voice. I am here, your hero is here.

I pressed my wet nose against his shoulder. It was the highest honor I could give. He jumped, but he didn’t run. He has lost the willingness to escape from danger. He reached out to me with his five-fingered hooves and touched my face, right there where the rock had bitten me. He murmured something like "hospital" or "healing", and though he was weak and discouraged, he led me away from the cold and chance of decay to a place full of green.

The healing process was a long run, so I took it as an opportunity to mentor him. Every time he sat beneath the tree, staring at the horizon with the pair of dull, grassless eyes, I would graze over and nudge him. I would stand firmly, showing him how a hero treats his scars. I offered him the wisdom from the trash pile: Overcome the garbage, and you will find the food. Every time, he would approach my neck with his face and forelimb, his hand shaking less each day. He started talking about “stress” and “childhood trauma” – words that make no sense. These words soon change to “hope” and “confidence” – words that still make no sense, but at least sound more positive. I allowed him to pamper me as if I were one of his pets, though we both know that it was my presence that knitted his broken heart back together.

Today, the sun is high. The hairless stands tall now. He no longer hides his head in his shoulders. He walked up to me just now, holding a bucket of the finest grains. He patted my flank and said something that sounded like, "You saved me, buddy."

I looked at him, my large, intelligent eyes reflecting his smile. Poor hairless. He still hasn't learned to speak properly, but at least I’ve taught him how to stand in the sun without falling over.