In this passage, Aran is just awakening from something "The Keeper" has done to him.
The water of a small stream bubbled up and swirled its way over rocks and dark soil, separating and bending clumps of grass as it slid downwards off a sloping hill. Birds chirped and sang in the cool, early morning dew that clung to rocks and earth blanketed the emerald meadow and dampened the breeze that moved and eddied gently over the land.
Aran lay in the grass nearby, limp and unconscious. A tiny ember of awareness awakening within him. He remained as inert as a rock or lump of soil, but there was life there, too. The firing of just enough neurons had allowed a simple awareness of body and surroundings to ensue.
Then the need and desire to move sparked within him, and the tip of his swollen and dry tongue was the first part of him to do so. He gradually slipped it between his lips, immediately sensing how parched and dry his mouth had become as well as a dreadful stiffness in his jaw.
His first actual thought: ‘Bloody hell, what’s happened to me?’
