full
“Unseeing” by Madison Scott-Clary (part 1 of 2, read by the author herself)
Today’s story is the first of two parts of “Unseeing” by Madison Scott-Clary, whose graphomania occasionally gets the better of her.
Unseeing is one of the stories featured in the prehistoric furry anthology When The World Was Young, available December 1. Excavate more information at fhfs.ink. You can find more of her writing, from short stories and poems to novels and a memoir, over at makyo.ink.
Today's story will be read for you by the author herself.
thevoice.dog | Apple podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts
If you have a story you think would be a good fit, you can check out the requirements, fill out the submission template and get in touch with us.
https://thevoice.dog/episode/unseeing-by-madison-scott-clary-part-1-of-2-read-by-the-author-herself
Transcript
You’re listening to The Voice of Dog,
Speaker:and Today’s story is the first of two parts of
Speaker:“Unseeing” by Madison Scott-Clary,
Speaker:whose graphomania occasionally gets the better of her.
Speaker:Unseeing is one of the stories featured in
Speaker:the prehistoric furry anthology
Speaker:When The World Was Young,
Speaker:available December 1.
Speaker:Excavate more information
Speaker:at fhfs.ink.
Speaker:You can find more of her writing,
Speaker:from short stories and poems to novels and a memoir,
Speaker:over at makyo.ink.
Speaker:Please enjoy “Unseeing”
Speaker:by Madison Scott-Clary, Part 1 of 2, read by the author herself,
Speaker:On the morning of every day, when days are warm and there is no rain,
Speaker:on days when Lyut knows when it is day and when it is night,
Speaker:he will gather his ingredients onto a small board and sit at the entrance to his cave
Speaker:and make his incense for three days hence.
Speaker:Lyut works with measured care, for he does not want to injure the pads of his paws nor
Speaker:nick his already-scuffed claws nor shave off any of his fur, nor, Ýng
Speaker:preserve him, damage his carefully honed equipment.
Speaker:He works with measured care and a practiced slowness,
Speaker:with a patience known to one who holds the highest devotion to his labor and to his lord.
Speaker:Lyut works with particular care when employing the use of his knife
Speaker:for he has cut himself before.
Speaker:He has cut himself and knows that not only will this spoil his incense for the day,
Speaker:it will also leave his pads aching and sore,
Speaker:will leave his fur matted and sticky,
Speaker:will leave a thin layer of blood upon all he touches until the flow stops and the wound scabs over.
Speaker:Knows that he would have to make his way down to the river to wash.
Speaker:Knows, too, after a particularly bad accident with his knife,
Speaker:that the stick he uses to guide his way down the path gets slippery
Speaker:and would need to be cleaned as well,
Speaker:that to bind a wound with only the use of one paw carries some particular difficulty.
Speaker:And so he gathers his ingredients and tools onto his board and carries them to the entrance to his cave
Speaker:where he sits and works with measured care.
Speaker:He works from left to right because he holds the knife and hammer in his right paw,
Speaker:and he builds the scent from bottom to top because that is how he has laid out his ingredients,
Speaker:and because it is the base notes of the scent that are the most forgiving to balance.
Speaker:Begins, then, with the crushed roots of nardin,
Speaker:which previously he had pounded and which now he lays against the board and measures ten claw-widths thereof
Speaker:and cuts with his knife.
Speaker:To this is mixed ten teardrops of common mastic the width of a claw. On holier days he may find himself using copal in its place, and indeed he may use that later.
Speaker:For now, he attempts to find nodules the size of one of his claws without requiring that it be cut or broken,
Speaker:lest his senses be dazzled
Speaker:and the balance lost
Speaker:The middle notes come next
Speaker:and Lyut takes a fingertip’s length of sweetgrass and puts it into the bowl with the base notes.
Speaker:The scent of sweetgrass is, yes, sweet, but it provides also the bulk of the material that will burn throughout the day.
Speaker:To this he adds sweet flag root which has been carefully washed and hung and dried.
Speaker:He grates this first with his knife before adding it to the bowl,
Speaker:scraping the blade almost perpendicular along the root to shave off a fibrous powder.
Speaker:These are all taken together in a stone mortar and ground with a stone pestle to pulverize them into a uniform powder,
Speaker:which he checks with gentle touches of the last fingertip on his left hand,
Speaker:which is the most sensitive.
Speaker:Judges with his nose and,
Speaker:deeming it correct, finishes, now, with the lone top note of a precious dried pod of cardamom
Speaker:and what he judges to be one third again in weight of makko powder to bind the incense.
Speaker:To build a scent from the bottom up is to tell the first of three prayers of creation to Ýng,
Speaker:and Lyut works with devotion in his heart as he grinds.
Speaker:He does not speak his prayer;
Speaker:the sound of stone against stone are his words.
Speaker:He does not look up to the heavens where he knows Ýng to reside for sight is not a sense he possesses;
Speaker:allows, instead, his lord’s presence to pierce his heart
Speaker:and travel down his limbs and guide the motions of his paws.
Speaker:The powder of the incense, thus created is sifted into a small bowl,
Speaker:the finest silt brushed from the mortar with the very tip of his tail.
Speaker:To mature incense in the quiet and the dry and the cool is to tell the second of three prayers of creation to Ýng,
Speaker:and Lyut again works with devotion in his heart
Speaker:as he unlimbers himself from where he had been kneeling
Speaker:and carries the bowl to the back of the cave where it will always be driest.
Speaker:He does not speak his prayer;
Speaker:the sound of his paws padding in dirt and fingertips dragging along stone wall are his words.
Speaker:He does not look for the shelf containing the other two incense bowls for sight is not a sense he possesses;
Speaker:allows, instead, his lord’s presence to pierce his heart
Speaker:and travel down his limbs to place the bowl beside the other two.
Speaker:Lyut then cleans his board,
Speaker:bringing it back into his cave and replacing unused ingredients in their bowls, jars, or baskets by touch and by scent
Speaker:At last, he picks up the rightmost bowl in the line and scoots the other two up into its place and carries it to the mouth of his cave.
Speaker:Along the way, he bends down and lifts a dish filled with ash, and carries it with him as well.
Speaker:To lay the incense trail is to tell the third and final prayer of creation to Ýng,
Speaker:and Lyut works still with the devotion in his heart as he tamps down the ash in dish into a smooth plane with the tip of his finger,
Speaker:then draws a careful furrow in the fine powder,
Speaker:sowing incense in its wake.
Speaker:He does not speak his prayer;
Speaker:the rhythm of the tamping and the quiet hush of incense and ash are his words.
Speaker:He does not look at the boxy spiral he draws for sight is not a sense he possesses;
Speaker:allows, instead, his lord’s presence to pierce his heart
Speaker:and travel down his limbs guide his left foreclaw while the right hand follows by touch,
Speaker:dropping the powdered incense in its wake.
Speaker:The presence of his lord burns bright within him.
Speaker:Lyut does not know light from darkness, but were he pressed to answer,
Speaker:he would say that Ýng’s presence is that of light,
Speaker:Their absence that of dark,
Speaker:and by this point in the day,
Speaker:Lyut is filled with light.
Speaker:The prayers of destruction follow the prayers of creation.
Speaker:Against a crease in the rock at the entrance of his cave is his fire pit.
Speaker:The night before, he brought in sticks and bark from the near-woods and laid them at the feet of the fire.
Speaker:In the mornings after preparing his incense, he begins the first prayer of destruction,
Speaker:of breaking down the sticks and shredding the bark into tinder and kindling.
Speaker:The sound of the crack of dry wood and the tear of fibrous bark his words,
Speaker:the spirit of his lord guiding his every movement.
Speaker:The second prayer of destruction is the forging or rekindling of fire.
Speaker:If there are embers left,
Speaker:then the words of this prayer is the sound of Lyut’s breath against them and the slow crackle of kindling catching alight.
Speaker:If the coals are out,
Speaker:then the words of this prayer is the singing of the bow drill between his feet,
Speaker:thermoception stretched taut as he strains to feel the warmth of the new flame starting in the tinder.
Speaker:The third and final prayer of destruction that Lyut offers to Ýng
Speaker:is that of the lighting of the incense.
Speaker:He works with the same measured care as he lights a punk from the fire,
Speaker:the spirit of his lord singing along his limbs,
Speaker:and touches it to the small mound of incense at the center of the trail he has built.
Speaker:The words of this prayer
Speaker:are silence. Only now does he speak his prayers aloud,
Speaker:and by now, he is overflowing with light.
Speaker:It seeps out through his fur,
Speaker:falls from his mouth in honeyed drops,
Speaker:shines from darkened eyes. Ýng
Speaker:is with him now as he chants,
Speaker:as the smoke wreaths him,
Speaker:as the scent of his labors fills his cave and the clearing and rises up past the tree-tops. Ýng
Speaker:is with Lyut,
Speaker:and I am as well.
Speaker:After prayer, Lyut feeds his fire and sits for a while before it to ensure that the sound of the wood burning is just as it should be and no louder
Speaker:and that the heat of the fire is neither too hot nor too cool, for he knows that a hot-burning fire that roared and rushed with the voice of Ýng’s anger
Speaker:was one that would at best burn out too soon and he had been taught that at worst it would claim souls as easily as wood.
Speaker:With the smoke of the fire mingling with that of his incense,
Speaker:with the scent of his devotion lingering in his nose and clinging to his fur and stinging sightless eyes,
Speaker:he takes up his knife walking stick and pads slowly down the path from his cave to the section of river he calls his own.
Speaker:His feet guide him with soft shuffling.
Speaker:His stick guides him with gentle tapping.
Speaker:His ears guide him with the sounds of the river. Ýng
Speaker:guides him with Their hand on his shoulder.
Speaker:At the river by his cave, there is a pool where the water flows out from between two rocks,
Speaker:and it is across that gap that he has strung a net. Lyut sets his stick aside and crawls on hands and knees to one of the rocks and with a long-practiced swish of his fingers through the water,
Speaker:he catches up the cords of the far end of the net from where they lay on the bank and sweeps his arm around to draw the net around and back toward him.
Speaker:I have smiled on him today, and in the net he feels the dancing of a fish and,
Speaker:upon dragging the net ashore, feels in its knots also the hard-shelled bodies of the crawfish that live their silent lives
Speaker:on the bottom of the silt-bedded river.
Speaker:The net entire is laid flat upon the shore to let the fish and crustaceans drown in air while Lyut cleans his paws and knife in the water of the stream.
Speaker:To wash in cold water is to speak a prayer of cleanliness to Ýng,
Speaker:but also to me, to me who knows the meaning of light dancing on clear water in a way the god of the sun cannot,
Speaker:in a way that blind Lyut cannot,
Speaker:and so I sustain myself with those prayers even as the ascetic guts the fish with measured care,
Speaker:washes once more in the stream,
Speaker:and then with practiced slowness
Speaker:strings his net once more,
Speaker:letting the constant stream of water flow brightly through the pounded and knotted reeds to catch fish,
Speaker:to catch food. Dripping and naked,
Speaker:Lyut crawls upstream along the shore,
Speaker:fingers crawling among the grass until he comes across the fronds of a fiddle-head fern
Speaker:of which he plucks two.
Speaker:Washes these, then wraps in them his daily catch of fish and sluggish crustaceans, and packs around the bundle clay from the riverbank.
Speaker:Takes then his stick in hand and taps his way back to his cave, where,
Speaker:after banking a portion of the fire, he nestles his bundle among the hot coals until it is dry and parched on the outside.
Speaker:In the meantime, Lyut walks carefully into the woods perpendicular to the hill on which his cave rests,
Speaker:brushing aside further fronds to the place where his nose tells him he may have his toilet.
Speaker:After finishing, another trip to the river is made,
Speaker:this time carrying a jug slung over his shoulder to be filled with water for his camp.
Speaker:By then, the smell of steamed fish is beginning to escape from the clay baker that he has formed,
Speaker:and the time to break his fast is upon him.
Speaker:His walking stick, hard and long-cured,
Speaker:is used to drag the baked clay from the embers and the jug of water put in its place to bring to a boil.
Speaker:He says a short prayer to Ýng for his bounty,
Speaker:for his food, and for the taking of three lives in order to fill his belly,
Speaker:and by the time the last word is finished,
Speaker:the clay is cool enough to tap and crack apart to exposed his steamed food.
Speaker:I sup from that prayer as well, for I provided him with his meal.
Speaker:He sets the spent clay aside and unfurls the ferns from around his food.
Speaker:His first bite is of the curled heads of the fronds,
Speaker:seasoned with the fat of the fish and the heady scent of crawfish.
Speaker:His second and third bites
Speaker:are the flesh of the fish scraped away from soft bones with sharp teeth.
Speaker:The rest of his meal is a silent contemplation of what wonderful complexities
Speaker:the silty life of a crustacean must hold,
Speaker:as he pulls the tails from the crawfish, eats the meat within,
Speaker:and sucks the butter from the heads.
Speaker:Fish head and skeleton and crawfish shells are placed in the jug of water now boiling,
Speaker:the makings of a thin broth which will be his sustenance for the rest of the day.
Speaker:For the third and final time,
Speaker:Lyut washes that day,
Speaker:and I revel in the act of his careful attention to his postprandial grooming.
Speaker:This is the time when he ensures that his pelt is clean and free of ticks and fleas.
Speaker:This is the time when he massages the dirt out of his pawpads.
Speaker:This is the time when he brushes his whiskers.
Speaker:This is the time when he lays his fur in order.
Speaker:This is the time when he makes himself pure in body before Ýng, having already made himself pure in spirit.
Speaker:Too, this is the time when he makes himself pure before me, though he knows it not.
Speaker:This is the time when he gives thought to the direction his fur is facing.
Speaker:This is the time when he gives thought to any dirt which may cover him.
Speaker:This is the time when he,
Speaker:blind pekania, blind fisher, puts thought, however abstract, into what a watcher may see.
Speaker:Lyut lives his life in prayer and devotion.
Speaker:It is a life that is lived ascending in a steady spiral of years, for time moves upward and yet is echoed below by the change of days,
Speaker:the change of weeks, the change of seasons. This year, this day,
Speaker:this soft spring is an echo of last soft spring beneath it.
Speaker:It is antipodal to the autumn that will come
Speaker:Cycles within cycles,
Speaker:spirals within spirals.
Speaker:This morning, too, is an echo of the day beneath it,
Speaker:behind it, in the past.
Speaker:His days are defined by the cycle of incense,
Speaker:prayer, fishing, foraging, meditating.
Speaker:He knows that it is day when he wakes when he feels the warmth from the sun.
Speaker:He knows when it is night when he feels the warmth fade.
Speaker:He knows when it is morning because he hears the birds sing.
Speaker:He knows that it is night when the birdsong of the day settle into the chorus of insects.
Speaker:Clean now, he meditates on this. He meditates on cycles. He meditates on warmth and coolness.
Speaker:He meditates on his relation to it,
Speaker:and on his relationship to Ýng.
Speaker:He has surmised, for instance,
Speaker:that his fur is of a particular quality that the sun is drawn to,
Speaker:and he has surmised that this is as worthy of prayer as the incense he makes,
Speaker:for was not the sun with Ýng?
Speaker:The sun is drawn to him as it is drawn to the rocks and the dirt and the bark of the trees.
Speaker:It is drawn to them and it dwells within them,
Speaker:for the sun powers him as warmth,
Speaker:and the sun fills the trees with a captive warmth that is released by fire.
Speaker:And are there not things that the sun shies away from?
Speaker:The sun shies away from night,
Speaker:from water, from the cool fresh leaves that interrupt it,
Speaker:for one need not sight to understand directionality,
Speaker:to understand shade as a consequence of sun’s arrow.
Speaker:Lyut lays on his back to let sun’s arrow dry him,
Speaker:to let that warmth pull the water from his fur
Speaker:and the chill from his bones,
Speaker:and then he lays on his front and lets Ýng’s light bathe his back as well.
Speaker:Not all prayer, Lyut knows,
Speaker:is in ritual. In ritual lies comfort.
Speaker:In ritual lies service.
Speaker:In ritual lies the active participation of worship,
Speaker:that portion of devotion that is a conversation with his lord.
Speaker:The time of ritual is the time when Lyut may speak up and say to Ýng:
Speaker:I am here, I am yours,
Speaker:I am your vessel of light and all that I do is in service to you
Speaker:and by my very existence,
Speaker:my every action, I serve your glory.
Speaker:Not all prayer is in service to Ýng, either,
Speaker:for some of it is to Their servant,
Speaker:to himself. In service of Their servant,
Speaker:he keeps himself clean and free of sin and distraction.
Speaker:In service of Their servant
Speaker:and to Their servants, he prepares the incense that wreaths himself and the village below.
Speaker:In service of Their servant and servants,
Speaker:he subsists only off a single meal drawn from the river
Speaker:and whatever alms the village cares to provide him along with the ingredients
Speaker:for the incense that he makes in turn.
Speaker:But in meditation lies the comfortable companionship.
Speaker:In meditation lies love.
Speaker:In meditation lies reassurance and trust.
Speaker:The time of meditation is the time when Lyut may sit next to Ýng
Speaker:in silence and appreciate the wonder of Them
Speaker:and the world that They have made.
Speaker:So this morning, he lays in the sun next to Ýng,
Speaker:beside Ýng, and revels in all that Ýng has created rather than singing praises to Them,
Speaker:because it is important even for the ascetic to understand the beauty of the world,
Speaker:the wonder and delight in it. It is as important for Lyut to feel the way his fur tugs at the sun, collects the warmth, and the way the sun pulls the water from him.
Speaker:It is important for Lyut to feel the ground beneath him
Speaker:and hear in its silence the praises to his lord.
Speaker:It is important for Lyut to marvel in the way Ýng’s sun shuns the underside of leaves
Speaker:and follows the bark of the trees on the side it faces.
Speaker:It is important for Lyut to bake
Speaker:until he’s panting
Speaker:and gulping in breaths of air,
Speaker:and then it is important for him to crawl back into his cave,
Speaker:stricken from the sun by the laws of directionality
Speaker:that he understands on a visceral level in lieu of a visual one,
Speaker:for sight is not a sense he possesses.
Speaker:And then it is time for him to remove his simmering broth from the fire
Speaker:and to sip it from the cool shade of his cave,
Speaker:straining it through sharp teeth to prevent fine carapaces
Speaker:and finer bones from getting caught in his throat,
Speaker:unsalted but nonetheless savory,
Speaker:until, despite the heat of the broth,
Speaker:his thirst is quenched.
Speaker:This, Lyut knows,
Speaker:Lyut relishes, is the cycle of the day,
Speaker:the cycle of the year,
Speaker:and, his lord promises him,
Speaker:the cycle of his life,
Speaker:for he will surely be reborn when the hours of his life slow to a stop.
Speaker:In this, Ýng is a liar,
Speaker:but it is a kind lie,
Speaker:a lie of omission,
Speaker:for when Lyut dies,
Speaker:I will take him unto me.
Speaker:I will take him and his acts in life together
Speaker:into my bowl and crush and knead
Speaker:and he will rejoice with me
Speaker:and I will rejoice with him
Speaker:and then whatever rest he has now,
Speaker:whatever glory he knows now,
Speaker:whatever elation he may feel shall be pale
Speaker:in comparison to what comes
Speaker:after. Lyut prays and works for the rest of the day,
Speaker:for today is the day that he makes incense for the town below.
Speaker:This week is the week of fasting
Speaker:and next week is the week of rejoicing,
Speaker:and so this week he must prepare for them three times the normal amount of incense,
Speaker:as this is the week they subsist on smoke until they cannot tell,
Speaker:Zita promises him,
Speaker:the white thread from the black after the sun sets and the cool night comes.
Speaker:This is the week they live on prayer and next is the week they live on celebration,
Speaker:when they bake small cakes in the heat of their fires,
Speaker:in the heat of their ovens, and five of which Zita will leave for him.
Speaker:Zita may or may not be her name,
Speaker:or perhaps only her title.
Speaker:He does not know, because beyond a few kind words,
Speaker:she will only pray with him
Speaker:and pick up the incense from the edge of the clearing before his cave
Speaker:and leave in its place the alms that the village provides,
Speaker:of flatbreads and berries,
Speaker:of the ingredients for the incense which they grow or perhaps purchase from other villages,
Speaker:who may purchase in turn from villages going south,
Speaker:going south and east.
Speaker:So today he retrieves his board once more from his cave and on it stacks all of the ingredients for the incense of the week of fasting
Speaker:that will feed the village and the two amphorae that will hold it.
Speaker:He sings wordless hymns to himself as he works with measured care cut the sweetgrass,
Speaker:to shave the calamus root,
Speaker:to count the cardamom pods.
Speaker:He sings to Ýng as he pounds and grinds batch after batch of incense
Speaker:until his hands are humming,
Speaker:until his pads are singing along with him.
Speaker:And then he takes his board back into the cave and returns with
Speaker:the stack of ingredients for the incense
Speaker:of the week of feasting,
Speaker:with the base notes of cassia and vanilla,
Speaker:the middle notes of ginger and turmuric,
Speaker:and the top note of star anise,
Speaker:the spices that season the cakes that they bake in celebration,
Speaker:and these he pounds with laughter
Speaker:and with tears, for with celebration comes mourning
Speaker:and with devotion comes the sudden feeling of loneliness brought on by laughing by oneself.
Speaker:It is evening and he can feel the sun’s arrow striking horizontal by the time he finishes,
Speaker:and when he steps out of his cave, cradling his three amphorae to his chest,
Speaker:he can smell even above the incense
Speaker:Zita sitting at the entrance to the clearing.
Speaker:He walks carefully until he can hear her breathing
Speaker:and then sits cross-legged before her and sets the vases down between the them,
Speaker:and they pray together:
Speaker:They who make the world,
Speaker:They who end it, They who bring the thunder, In Tsuari which fell,
Speaker:In Tsuari which rose from the ashes,
Speaker:We offer up the words of our forefathers,
Speaker:We offer up the smoke of our forefathers,
Speaker:We offer up our hearts to you.
Speaker:In Ýng's name we pray,
Speaker:In Ýng's world we pray,
Speaker:In Ýng's own voice we pray, By the light of the sun we pray,
Speaker:By the heat of the fire we pray.
Speaker:And on until the sun’s arrow has wandered off course and into the night sky.
Speaker:This week, this week of fasting,
Speaker:Zita has not brought him alms.
Speaker:There are no soft leaves of flatbread or ingredients for incense,
Speaker:just as one year ago
Speaker:there were no leaves of bread,
Speaker:and one year before that,
Speaker:there were no leaves of bread.
Speaker:This week, Lyut does not smile kindly to Zita as she collects the amphorae and walks the path down the slope to the village, because the fasting of prayer is also a fasting from emotions and worldly attachments.
Speaker:And the next day, it is truly a fast,
Speaker:for there are no fish in his net,
Speaker:and if there are no fish in his net,
Speaker:he knows that he must not collect the fiddlehead ferns,
Speaker:and instead of savory broth,
Speaker:Lyut drinks only boiled water,
Speaker:hot and cleansed by fire,
Speaker:and he spends the rest of the day in meditation,
Speaker:and he goes to bed
Speaker:hungry. I watch as he sleeps,
Speaker:fitful, and leave for him two fish in his net for his unknowing devotion to me.
Speaker:It is the last night of the week of fasting and it is the thirtieth year that Lyut has served Ýng and myself that I have decided to change him
Speaker:and by changing him, change the world,
Speaker:for while I am the god of the water and the god of watching and the god of death,
Speaker:am I not also a trickster god?
Speaker:I am the trickster god who confounded Ýng in his creation of the smooth plains of the world
Speaker:by carving the land with my rivers.
Speaker:I am the trickster god who confounded the lord by setting the moon in the sky to tug at the waters of Their oceans in tides,
Speaker:even when the moon is not seen.
Speaker:I am the trickster god who brought death
Speaker:to Ýng’s ever-living world.
Speaker:I am the trickster god and my trouble will come back on me thirtyfold, I am sure,
Speaker:but Lyut is the thirtieth ascetic who has served me
Speaker:and I am ready. Lyut has once more gone to sleep hungry,
Speaker:belly filled with prayer and contrition and boiled water.
Speaker:No fish in the net,
Speaker:no ferns to be had,
Speaker:no stale leaves of flatbread or sun-dried berries.
Speaker:I come to him then.
Speaker:I come to him and I touch the back of his neck,
Speaker:then the crown of his head,
Speaker:then the lids of his eyes and the scars around them,
Speaker:and then I sit in the clearing and wait for him to waken.
Speaker:I sit and watch, for that
Speaker:is my jurisdiction.
Speaker:When the pekania stirs at the slow warming of day,
Speaker:his eyes drift open as usual to the slit of relaxed muscles that is his habit,
Speaker:and then he shouts.
Speaker:He shouts because I am a trickster god
Speaker:and after forty years of life,
Speaker:after thirty times thirty years of blind ascetics serving Ýng and myself,
Speaker:I am ready for change
Speaker:and I have given him sight.
Speaker:I know his thoughts: I know that when he perceives the light of the sun for the first time in his forty years, blurry and bright, that he is struck with a mighty pain and a fear far greater than any accident with a knife could cause. I know his terror,
Speaker:his confusion, and his instinctual need to escape,
Speaker:and so I watch him scramble back into his cave and press his face to the back wall for minutes on end,
Speaker:barely breathing,
Speaker:eyes clenched shut.
Speaker:“Ýng!” he cries at last.
Speaker:“My lord, my lord, what is happening?”
Speaker:I answer in Ýng’s stead:
Speaker:“You see.” He pants into the silence that follows.
Speaker:I know his thoughts:
Speaker:I know that he hears Ýng within his heart and within his bones and within his breath.
Speaker:I know that I have spoken to him in the language of sound,
Speaker:and that this brings with it its own fear.
Speaker:“You see,” I say again.
Speaker:“You are not Ýng.”
Speaker:“I am Týw. I am the god of the moon and the water and of watching and of death.”
Speaker:“Týw?” “Týw,” I repeat,
Speaker:and smile at his confusion.
Speaker:“But Ýng is the god of all things.
Speaker:How are you the god of those things?”
Speaker:“Ýng is the god of all things, and They are the god of me,
Speaker:but of those things not under Their direct dominion,
Speaker:some are under mine, and I am the god of watching,
Speaker:of looking, of seeing.
Speaker:I am the god of water,
Speaker:and I am with you
Speaker:when you fish and bathe.
Speaker:I am the god of the moon,
Speaker:and when it shines down on you,
Speaker:I am with you. When Ýng is with you,
Speaker:I am as well. When you serve Ýng in these ways,
Speaker:you also serve me.”
Speaker:Tears course freely down his cheeks,
Speaker:and he says: “It hurts to see.”
Speaker:“You have never seen before.
Speaker:Come out of your cave.”
Speaker:He does not move,
Speaker:and so I wait. I know that he will need to attend to his day soon,
Speaker:and I know that he is praying to Ýng and feels the compulsion to perform his acts of service,
Speaker:his rituals, and I know that the village below is waking up to ready itself for a day and night and week of celebration.
Speaker:So I wait. Too, Ýng waits, because although I sense Their wrath on the horizon,
Speaker:I think that it will not come yet,
Speaker:because this is also new for Them,
Speaker:and They also watch.
Speaker:Eventually, Lyut, crawls,
Speaker:eyes clenched shut,
Speaker:on hands and knees,
Speaker:crawls out into the sun, and sits cross-legged in the center of his clearing.
Speaker:“Open your eyes.” He does not.
Speaker:I know that he can see the warmth of the sun behind closed eyelids,
Speaker:showing dusky orange through them.
Speaker:I know that he can sense the shadows cast in the sun’s arrow by the leaves above
Speaker:and around him. I know that even this seeing is too much for him.
Speaker:“Open your eyes, Lyut,
Speaker:faithful.” “You are not Ýng,
Speaker:you cannot command me.”
Speaker:“No,” I say. “I cannot command you,
Speaker:but you are as faithful to me as you are to Them in the ways that I have described,
Speaker:and so I ask for this small obeyance.”
Speaker:Lyut ponders this for a long while,
Speaker:his tail flitting agitatedly behind him,
Speaker:drawing praises to me in the packed earth.
Speaker:Finally, he opens his eyes,
Speaker:a crack, a squint.
Speaker:He opens his eyes and looks at the ground before him.
Speaker:He looks at his naked body.
Speaker:He looks at the clearing and at the trees around him.
Speaker:Looks in wonder. Looks in awe.
Speaker:Looks in terror and in panic.
Speaker:Looks at the ground and the trees and the sky.
Speaker:Tries, even, to look at the sun, and learns that the sun’s arrows are keenest above all to the eyes.
Speaker:“It hurts! It hurts!”
Speaker:“Do not look directly at the sun, faithful,”
Speaker:I laugh. “Ýng has decreed that the sun provides your life, and so it is too dear for you to behold.”
Speaker:He grinds his palms against his eyes and smears his fur with tears and with dirt.
Speaker:Even as he cries,
Speaker:he is marveling at the flashes and swirls of light that come to him now,
Speaker:and each phosphene that blooms in pink and white and green is a prayer to me,
Speaker:so I allow him this moment of non-darkness until the moment passes
Speaker:and he can open his eyes once more without pain.
Speaker:“Where are you, Týw?”
Speaker:“I am with you.” “Can I see you?”
Speaker:“We are also too dear for you to see with your eyes, Ýng
Speaker:and I, but do you not feel the way we pierce your heart and burn along your arms as you prepare the incense for our offering?”
Speaker:Lyut is silent once more, still once more.
Speaker:He prays. He prays to Ýng with a fervor he has not yet shown in his forty years.
Speaker:Tears stain tracks down his cheeks as he struggles with the sudden,
Speaker:overwhelming sight.
Speaker:Sight, a sense he now possesses.
Speaker:“Go and prepare for your day, faithful.
Speaker:I am with you.” This was the first of two parts of
Speaker:“Unseeing” by Madison Scott-Clary,
Speaker:read for you by Khaki, your faithful fireside companion.
Speaker:Tune in next time to find out how Lyut and the village
Speaker:cope with their reality being turned upside down.
Speaker:As always, you can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,
Speaker:or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:Thank you for listening
Speaker:to The Voice of Dog.
