Ode of the Blind

[Royal Peasant 445]

Father Circle Trial
 

Spoiler

 

Summer guided the sightless
Through the biting chill of night
Only darkness greeted the directed
Sound, scent, soul.

All that was felt in the newfound world
A world untouched.
Untamed senses outstretched.
Hindering, humbling, and heavy.

Suns Sightless Summer.
 

It was a strange experience, to be blind; to have the eternal night brushing one’s senses. Where not even the outline of structure in the night can guide one's hand or steps forward, reliant on the hands and guidance of a mentor to mount a steed for the ahead while the only senses that he found was sound, rippling through the dark like a droplet on a river.

Trot, Trot, Trot. Ruffle of fabric. Dance of leaves and a tickle of cold on the skin.
“Are we in the north?” His voice felt consuming.
“No. We are not.” Her voice felt distant.

They arrived, and with an unsure step he carefully brought his feet down upon the unseen ground. Grass was felt, banishing the idea that they were in the north. As his mentor's voice danced in the air and he turned, trying to keep focus on the sound as insects buzzed loudly within his ears. Final words were given, the earth feeling coarse, and dry. He didn’t know this land. The ruffle of feathers echoed in his ears and the sound of the retreating trots of a horse grew distant.

He was alone.

Dry earth. Ticklish grass. Caution driving the man on all fours like a beast.
Pushing forward, he crawled. Like an ape. Drawn deeper.
It was getting…warmer? But wasn’t it already the day?
It began to burn on pale skin. Scorching. Hot.
Darkness revealed naught.

The heat of the night had hidden the truth from his senses, making him believe that night was day, and day was night. Something that he became painfully aware of as the travel he made bared the heat on his skin as night began to turn to day. Not able to find shelter the heat bared down, suffocating his senses. Drawn by the sound of insects he found bark, wood. A tree.

Grasping blindly. Insects grasped and crunched between jaws.
Nourishment. Nectar. Refreshing in the burning drought.
The sun scorched blindly on flesh. Fingers dug between roots.
Digging out a hole. A burrow. Hiding from the heat.

For several days hiding within that burrow when the air began to grow hot, and scavenging insects from the tree, clamouring up the branches and swinging upon them while being lured in by the sounds of fluttering wings, buzzing, and the feeling of carapace against skin. Yet it couldn’t last. The insects began to learn. Growing distant. Retreating from the tree he had made a burrow under. He needed to keep moving.

Food is scarce. Hunger gripped and thirst clung.
Braving the heat again. Only to slip.
What was thought to be even ground revealed a slope.
Gravity claimed away and tumbled the vessel down.
Impacting against earth, ground, and then scorching sands.

He stumbled down the side of what could have only been a cliff, a hill, perhaps even the side of a mountain. He could not know in the darkness. Earth and stone scratched and bruised flesh as he fell down, slipping further and further down the slope while protecting his head until the soft, but scorching heat of sand greeted him. And the sound of splashing waves - the shoreside? The heat bore down and the need for shelter had him pushing to the waterside, dipping in the salt and cooling off from the scorching rays.

Salt surrounded the sense of smell.
Waves echoed in the ears, drawing out all.
Warm waters cooled and protected from the scorching heat.
A moment of reprieve followed by the sting of a claw.

Crabs are cruel demons, he decided then, when one latched upon his toe and soon became his dinner. Cracked under fist and bone then eaten raw. It was delightful compared to the crunch of insects he had been reduced to eating for the last few days. The shell of the crab had been kept and tucked into his pants for use later as thirst tugged on his dry lips and tongue. The juices of his prey could only sustain him so far. But what was that…smell?

Flowery aroma. He knew that smell. Or something similar.
Drawn to it, the touch of an oily petal touched his fingers.
Then the texture of a fruit.
Plucked. Feasted. Thirst quenched.
The world swam.

Diddyfunkle. While the fruit were refreshing, and likely saved him the aftereffects, it cost the time he needed to train his senses to stretch even further. He began to hear sounds where there wasn’t any, the scorching sun felt strange and tingly on his skin. Everything was different, soothing. He was hallucinating. No colours to see, only the world began to swim and dance all around. Passing out and awakening, unsure of where he was. Only feeling the scorching itch, and burn of blistered flesh from the sun he had laid within under the effect of the diddyfunkle.

Pain spiked with every movement. Shaking the limbs.
Aching the flesh. But he needed to.To move.
Lost, lonely, light headed.
Wings followed.

He was starting to notice that the sound of wings seemed to circle him ever since he arrived here. The weight that birds were likely waiting for him to perish so that they could scavenge his corpse filled his mind in that moment. Doubt almost consumed his mind before he focused, calmed himself with a moment of meditation in a form that screamed with scorched flesh. And then the buzzing sound of insects returned. And he found an edge to a mountain side. Though If it was the same or another he had no clue.

Fingers dug, scraped, and grasped at soil and stone.
Tugging, biting painfully at an already abused form.
Pushing through limits. Away from sands. Stone.
Fingers finding grass, earth.
Shade of a tree sheltering flesh.

It was a different tree he had found this time, and he could only assume that he had found a different mountain. Or a hill that he had scaled on all fours. The leaf span of this tree was able to cover him, reducing the need for him to dig under the roots, so he instead pulled himself into a nook within the trees and began to rest. Taking a solid day of rest just to recover before his senses stretched out. Insects surrounded him from all around, but also…birds, and what sounded like a trickle of water?

Water on a mountain. A lake? An oasis?
Movement fled him as he moved to the edge.
Finding nectar of sweet, cool waters.
Flowing waters through a current.

For the first time in what felt like weeks, he had fully tamed his thirst and had coverage from the sun of the scorching day. The scent of flowers, of flora, filled his breath and the crisp cool water. Life was around him. And if there was a lake? That meant one thing. Fish. He pushed into the water and attempted to catch fish as he felt the ripples of their movements against his skin. It took time. Practice. Eating the flora like a herbivore and drinking from the water until finally his fingers clenched around the scaled body of a fish.

It was delicious. All was consumed. Head, eye, flesh, guts.
It all went down. Nourishment. Sharp fangs tearing into flesh.
A fish a day kept the hunger away.

Time passed like this uncounted, the shift from scorching heat to warm summer being his only clue of the passing time. Soon followed by him getting used to the shifting sound of nature around him. The insects were quiet during what he felt was the ‘day’, yet the fish were louder, splashing and feeding. At night the song of the insects grew more vibrant, making it easier for them to be hunted. And so he existed for a while, catching fish, hunting insects, occasionally eating a flower when a day of hunting was sparse. Until one day he made a strange discovery on the lake…a boat. Tied up and bound at the bottom of it with a stone.

Perplexed. Confused. Bamboozled.
A boat in the middle of nowhere?
It made no sense.
Was there descendant life nearby?
Here!?

Confusion leads to curiosity. To blind exploration. Fingers searching the surroundings and seeing what they could find. No words were given, for he did not desire to meet anyone. Just understand more of where he was. And understand he soon did. Finding what felt like marks in the earth…of a battle. Old. Ancient. Abandoned camp with a blanket so worn with holes and full of insects that it must have been left here for a very long time. Further exploration found a hot spring that he took a moment to bath within. And felt the presence of other animals joining him in the waters. Soothing the aches and pains that lingered. And finally…what felt like an altar, damaged, destroyed. And a pedestal where a tome should have rested, stripped clean.

A cult of some faith lived here.
Had lived here.
But something dealt with them.
In fighting? Rivals? But they were gone.
Long gone. Ruins reclaimed by nature.

It was a strange relief knowing he was the only ‘descendant’ within the land. Tension he didn’t know had built up eased, and the continued path of survival reclaimed his form. Dead flesh from the scorching heat peeled off and washed away in the flowing hot spring, giving way to flesh that seemed to be able to handle the heat better. Able to bear and adapt to the flame of the land's fury. Time passed, his habit of checking the moon turning to counting the shift of temperature to mark the time that continued on.  Until the day the rain came.

The rain was heavy. Hammering the land and loosening the soil.
The lake grew wild, the currents stronger.
It gripped upon him and washed him away through the current.
Direction less, breathe lost.
Water filled his lungs.
Impacting an unknown shore and hacking the current out.

He hadn’t been prepared for that. The rhythmic repetition that he was slowly growing used to with his sense of touch, hearing and scent, washed away by the storm of rain and water. He didn’t know how long the waters had pulled him, how far away he was from where he originally was. But he felt he went down, flowing away from the mountain. And once again he was battered and bruised from the descent of the mountain. The rain made it difficult to tell left, to right, or hint in which direction to go as everything echoed its song. He could only rely on his touch. Digging into the ground and pulling forward to find shelter.

Sand and earthy grass mixed under touch.
The prickle of a cactus stung.
Biting skin and clinging. Repulsed and a new direction found.
Clear water found upon fingertips, a rocky growth giving shelter.
A new nest was found. Rest and slumber came swift.    

The rain lasted slightly longer than expected, and the thorns from a plant that grew on the rocky walls burned as it cut and dug into flesh. Several pointy plants had wounded his hands now that they were starting to twitch from them. Or perhaps it had been the venom of the plants themselves that were making his hands tremble and twitch. It took a day for the sensation of touch to return to them where he nibbled on the moss that had grown near the water and drank of its source. The shell of the crab finally proved its worth as he scraped the moss from the stone to eat it.

Recovered, thankfully no breaks from the slip down the water slide.
Then..a cluck. A cluck of a chicken echoed out.
Body froze. Stomach rumbled.
The blind stalked the sound…waited.
Pounced. Neck snapped in jaws.
Crimson soaked skin.

He went feral for a moment. Or was he just returning to how he was in his youth? He stalked the chicken; or at least he assumed it was a chicken, by its sounds. Lowered his form to be less noticeable, waiting for it to draw close before he launched at it. Sharpened canines biting down a thin neck before he jerked, felt a snap. And the body grew still within his jaws. He ate well that day. The feathers felt pleasant on his skin. He didn’t know where he had ended up but he could feel that the grass here was…softer, cooler. More vibrant in its life. And he couldn’t feel any sand around as the echo of crashing waves filled his senses from the left of him.

Waves echoed in his ears. Cool grass under toes and knuckles.
Insects were scarce, he couldn’t hear them anymore.
But animal sounds tugged his senses.
No trees to be found, only brush, green, and animals.
An open plain by the sea.

He had gotten utterly lost in the darkness and the rain. The origin he had been left at felt so distant, yet it could have been at his back for all he knew. Or even just ahead of him. But with a lack of insects around he began to regress to a..primal, natural state. Hiding in the bush and pouncing upon shifting and moving prey. Finding rabbits caught within jaws, chickens snapped and plucked. Bones and feathers began to decorate his hair and tattered fabrics around his waist as crimson clung and stained his skin until he washed it on the coast side. Berries found by following the trials animals had left with his fingers allowed him to quench his thirst.

His mind regressed. Settling on basic needs.
Food. Thirst. Shelter.
The food cried and fell still under my jaws.
Fruits and berries fed nourishment.
The sun still burned. But shelter in trees eased the heat.
Strangely the wings of the stalking bird still echoed above…

The predator he had become was tempted to climb and hunt the bird that he caught circling above him so many times now, the flap of the wings, the ruffle of feathers. Even the cry of a hawk's call. Which increased when he caught the sound of swooping wings as a rabbit, or mouse he had been hunting became the prey of this bird instead of himself. It almost became a competition. Who could catch the prey first, the land bound beast, or the avain in the skies? It soothed a loneliness he didn’t realise he was feeling to humour the idea that it was the same bird each time, despite how unlikely that was.

A grunt, a squeal. Something was rushing towards him.
He dove out of the way. The feel of something sharp. Cut his flank.
A heavy trotted foot. A huff of breath. A boar.
He listened for the charge. Waiting. Ducking. Rolling.
Evading. Landing kicks to its flank.
A leg snapped. The boar tumbled.
He pounced.

Boar tusks added to the decorations of blood soaked feathers, rabbit toes and scrapes of pelt he hadn’t eaten upon his garb. It was too much to eat alone, eating his full and then trusting on nature to take their own filling. Listening, and agreeing with his senses as he felt wings descend upon the boar, and the brush rustle as other creatures grew near. The carcass was going to be plucked clean. But the wound on his side wasn’t going to deal with itself. The bite of salt water splashed and washed the wound. Leaves were cleansed and laid over the cut, and the vines of a king were bound tight around to apply pressure.

The wound burned. Stung. And itched all at the same time.
The leaves were packed tight. Nature’s bindings.
And he laid still. Feeling the flow of crimson still.
But he felt light headed.
Tired.
Sleep came soon.

He, luckily, didn’t bleed out. The binding was tight enough to stall the blood flow. Even luckier that it didn’t get infected without clear, boiled water to cleanse the wound. But as he was healing. he went over his senses through the darkness. He was used to the sense of sound now, enough to catch the movement of beasts to avoid attacks, the sound of movement in the wind. The sense of smell gave him an idea of what was nearby, of what he was stalking, from the scent of pelts, to the markings left in surroundings, and even the aroma of flora. His skin had hardened under the trial  and rough treatment. Yet he had honed his sense of touch, to the point where he could trust himself to move through branches within the trees without risking falling. He had returned…to nature.

Sightless, Soundless, Boundless.
He grew in the flames.
Hardened against stones.
Held by the grasp of rootes.

Scent, Sound, Sensations.
Honed, practised and grown.
The lack of vision.
Of colour.
Have a way to a new world.

A beauty in the ripple.
The pulse of shadow.
A canvas of the night.

An Ode to the Blind.  

 

Spoiler

Thank you for reading my little tale! I do hope you enjoyed it, and my little attempt at poetry.
Have a wonderful day!