Nothing, no image, lasted for any length of time.
Here was a glimpse of the swamp, his home and god; it whirled away after only a moment's observation.
Here a glimpse of his mother, or his father, or someone he felt sure was kin; away into darkness it spun again.
Here a feeling of mud beneath his hooves and a muggy breeze, carrying the scent of carrion and overripe fruit, sunlight peeping through the dense leaves above, dappling the water and roots and trunks, the sonorous sounds of cicadas and june bugs buzzing nonchalantly in the canopy; all this information in no more time than a beat of one of those beetle's thin, transparent wings. Then it was back to darkness and time to think if he was lucky, or headlong into another vision and more information to assess otherwise.
So much passed him by in this manner, fractions of seconds from the rest of his life, and possibly from those before and after him.
At first, he could not keep his thoughts together through this barrage of sensation; he spent ages and ages just trying to understand what it was he saw. He then observed quietly, making note of all he could, preparing for the life he knew he would live soon.
He would be there, in some era; after some untold parade of dreams and visions had whirled by his already weary eyes, he would drop into a steady existence, a continuous timeline. He cataloged all of the information he could to prepare himself, though it was hard to hold onto anything amid the whirling chaos of his dreams.
Gradually, the dream fragments grew longer. He came to understand the the look of his people. He grew to know the typicality and variance of their fur, scales, horns and eyes. He loved to watch them, graceful and bright, flitting through the swamps.
Many of the fragments were from different perspectives; from low to high, from strong and wiry to aged and bent. He began to note an odd trend; there was an unusual weight to his head. The older he was in the dream, the heavier it felt, as if his head was swelling in his age.
When he noticed this, he began to look around in any fragment he saw others of his kind in; there were a distressingly small number of these, he came to realize, the majority seeming to be of wild animals and bugs and plant growth. Their heads were sleek and graceful, with horns perched daintily on the tops of their heads, and light plates were evident on their muzzles.
His face did not feel like that. His face felt stiff and hard, far too heavy for that sleek, slight visage the others presented.
He began searching for water in the dreams. He pushed away the irrelevant glimpses into his life irately. He looked in all the still pools he could find, not noticing he was controlling these dreams, and lengthening them, gaining control over his own mind, building lucidity and willpower.
Finally, pushing as hard as he ever had, and harder yet, he forced his dreams to bend to his will. Clear water sparkled in the lush growth, and he strode victoriously to it. Then he saw what he had so long wanted to see, reflected in a still pond surrounded by high grass - his face.
What had happened to his face?
There was none of the grace and beauty in his face that he saw in the other does and bucks; his face was covered in slate-gray plating that looked like nonliving stone. Two startled, yellow eyes stared out of folds in the mass on his head. It swallowed up his horns, making them coarse and thick instead of the slender beauty he had previously seen. His legs gave out beneath him, and he dropped to the bank of the pond, transfixed by the sight.
He had no idea how long this vision lasted, but it was longer than any dream previous. He finally turned his head away, numb, and relented once again to the rapid changes of his visions. The fragments now were longer, even more detailed, and greatly varied, but it was long before he took interest in them again.
He pondered long on the sight of his reflection.
This discovery, he knew, was his namesake.
That inscrutable stone face.
