Illustratio - Enlightenment

[HandsomeFloppa 722]

 

Illustratio

 

---

 

---

 

“Come here, and pray.”

“How often?”

“As often as your feet can make the journey.”

 

It happened in the old land. Into a town he had not yet visited, Siegfried had stumbled, the blind fool quite wary from the preparations for the voyage. His dreams had been littered with strange visions, of a land far away, and of a strange man, each time, looking different, but still evoking the same emotion in Siegfried. Awe.

Every vision differed. He was on a mountain, one night, the next, on a ship. But always, as though it had been commanded, the man appeared in the distance, and in a short time, reached Siegfried. And each time, this figure made a strange sign over him, raising his right hand with three fingers, the thumb, index, and middle fingers, pointed towards heaven, and the other two, towards the earth. This hand was raised to Siegfried’s forehead, and a small plus sign was drawn, then lowered to his chest, and another cross drawn there, after which the hand returned to the forehead, drawing the second and final cross there. And each time, this ended the vision.
But another strange thing was, the number 33 always showed up somehow. At times, it was the amount of money he had on him. Other times, he was a sheppard, and it was the number of sheep he tended to.

It would be an understatement to say, Siegfried was in a perpetual state of confusion and awe. And interestingly enough, his albino cat, the one his ‘Lord’ sent him, was never present. Not a single time. He was not a smart man, by any means, but easily, he could deduce, these visions were not sent by this ‘Lord’, to whom he had attributed his faux-vision, but to another figure.
Soon after this revelation, he would conclude that it was the man who continued appearing in his dreams and visions, who must be his patron.

And yet he could not contemplate for long, this mystery of his, as his prayer was interrupted.
 

“Get up.”

 

Was he being robbed? In any case, he complied. It was better to lose what little he had, than his life.

“I do not have much.”

“I do not care. Get on the horse.”

“What do you want from me?”

“...”

 

He did as he was told to. And off they rode! Where? God only knew, and the man, perhaps, though it did not seem so at first. After about an hour of riding, they arrived at the ruins of a mystic settlement, now engulfed by a volcano.

I shan’t detail the entire conversation, for it should bore you to death, but it went similar to this. The man asked why Siegfried was blind. The response was given freely. The man asked about anger towards the assailant. Siegfried most definitely had a lot of that. The man went to depart, then, leaving Siegfried in the cold, alone, blind. And their discussion was ended with the aforementioned dialogue:

 

“Come here, and pray.”

“How often?”

“As often as your feet can make the journey.”

 

 

---

 

The man heeded these words. Often, after this meeting, he took up that journey, and becoming a pilgrim, visited the site at least twice in each week, and spent time there, in contemplative prayer. Many times, these bouts of prayer resulted in visions, each time, the focus shifting more and more to the mysterious figure.

It was not long, perhaps a couple months at most, after the initial encounter, that this contemplation gave Siegfried a little more clarity, not yet understanding, but accepting his calling. And when he began realizing what this calling was, a strange thing happened.

There he sat, upon the mountain, near the hot magma, in deep prayer. What was the meaning of these visions? Why 33? What is that sign, which the man made over him? And, as though revealed to him by God directly, he understood - these questions were not meant to be answered, yet. He should place his faith in whoever it was, sending them, that he should one day understand, or perhaps fulfill them.
Slowly, he felt less of his weight upon the ground. And, inevitably, his feet left the ground, and the whole of his body was above the ground by around a foot. Siegfried did not notice. He was too deep in prayer to acknowledge it, and there were none to observe him, nearby. And yet it happened, Siegfried was levitating.

After a couple minutes, as Siegfried came to the end of his prayer, this strange phenomenon subsided, and he was gently lowered to the ground, and when he came to, from the trance, he did not know what went down. But he descended the mountain a new man, with newfound faith and trust in whom he could only name God.

 

Spoiler

OOC: Please do not metagame the events of this post. 
Related post: