(I worry about how people read this story; I would just like to clarify something: this story takes place a long time ago, written as a "looking back on something that is bad that happened a long time ago and some of it is inaccurate because I can't remember that long ago but it's still pretty cool even though it uses some big words" story, and the narrator is a (then) 19 year old young man who is now looking back on his memories decades later.  Well, maybe not decades, but a long time after it originally happened.  That's it.  The rest you have to figure out on your own…    Enjoy!)
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Original Manuscript by Monsieur Rachanóir

To start this account, I will not say a word of foreshadowing nature, lest you should lose the feel of my life through these words.  Let my story be shown rather than told, for none of my life's hardships shall be forced upon unwilling ears.  My experience in this world cannot be explained by any, and only reasoned in its absurdity by myself alone.  Though my tendency is to detail, I will relate the events as I remember them.
       June
Light had already flooded the French countryside and the thin branches of thorn trees formed intricate shadows on the damp grass outside my window.  The white, tranquil clouds comforted the low, glowing orb, as rays shone through the fog and pierced the rolling hills like daggers.  My chair creaked with the soft sound of straining wood, then eased back together.  The silence was broken by a stabbing shriek, followed by subsequent cries just as loud.  I averted my eyes from the view and they traveled up a weathered, gnarly old tree, out onto a high branch.  Partly obscured by clusters of leaves, glinting black feathers and dull, brown color, flashing between the leaves, caught my attention.
The tussle came out into the open air and I could make out the shapes of an average sized raven attacking a pitifully small brown bird.  I watched with vague curiosity as the tiny bird attempting to drive the black monster away.  A spectacularly executed dive intimidated its enemy and the petite bird reentered its treetop home with little sounds of triumph that barely reached my ears.  With an aura of resentment the raven flew off. 
My eyes traveled back over the horizon as I hovered on the outskirts of my still unformed thoughts.  The light faded as a cool breeze found its way to my window.  I could hear a distant, reedy note hovering in the air.  It died and was then reborn in a chorus of answering notes.  My mind was lingering on nothing as jumble of thoughts began to unfurl.  A meaning was in front of me, a fruit I had only to reach out and grasp, only to have it fall into dust and be swept away in the clandestine wind.  I felt the knot approaching and inexorably, darkness eclipsed my rational mind, and I drifted away.  An ominous shadow crept to my heart, touched, and all at once disappeared. 
The chair rocked forward and I sprang up, though not quite as quickly as the word allows.  I stood upright, breathing heavily, checking my pounding heart and calming my distressed and alert mind.  Almost as if its time were gone, the fear faded away as all feelings of foreboding eventually do.  I was left with my tense physical being and became once again aware of the sun, blindingly stunning as it cast a scene of such serenity that the dangerous feeling left me, to be brought up again at the worst time possible.

The rest of my morning went along normally enough, as I piled my excess crops into a wooden cart, preparing to spend my day at the market.  Rolling down the dusty