This is my interpretation of Enkidu, a character from the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh who is a form of the archetypal “wild man”. He befriends the titular King Gilgamesh of Uruk, with whom he goes on an adventure in a cedar forest. When the two slay the Bull of Heaven sent down by the goddess Inanna/Ishtar, the gods sentence Enkidu to death as punishment. The grief-stricken Gilgamesh searches for the secret of eternal life in the epic’s second half, only to learn that it was never intended for mere mortals like him and his fallen friend. It is infamously a rather tragic story.
Being fond of prehistoric life as I am, I made my Enkidu a late-surviving Neanderthal, but he has picked up a few artifacts of human civilization such as gold bracelets and a copper spearhead. One does wonder if finding the fossil remains of Neanderthals and other pre-sapient hominins might have inspired various myths of humanoid creatures such as “wild men” around the world.