These eleven chapters comprise Part One of a novel of thirty-seven chapters, entitled As Runs the Deer. It is a dialectic play on the processes of Time, as well as a play with evolving dialects. Nominally set in the 19th c., in an Appalachian-like terrain, it shows the difficulties James Ian Pierson meets when emerging out of his wilderness to re-enter his former life. Opening his own story by means of his sycamore cane, the 19- yr.-old amnesiac must soon reconcile his past with the invading "Now!" He evades the intrusion of a drunken hunter, is overcome by the wintry elements, brought from his icebed by Welsh woodsman Eustace, befriended by Mercury, ancient herbalist, keeper of the Myths. Frivolous Emily Marie Marchault must also reconcile herself with Ian's uneasy re-entry. Shackled by gilded chains of manners, she sees herself as overprotected by her guardian, Breton, and chips away at his ivory tower.