“Are you?”
“No.” Thurl answered. Then, slowly: “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“You’re going to need to be,” Iassa told him.
“Yes.”
Thurl’s face itched. His useless eyes throbbed and ached. The chunacat cloak across them was uncomfortable.
“He would have been proud of you,” Iassa said. “He was proud of you. Maybe more proud than any Meson father has ever been of a Meson son.”
Thurl didn’t know what to say. He kept replaying his final moments with Sohjos: when he helped Sohjos to stand and walk to the Racroft village; his father shouting with his flagging, failing breath, “you have to save my son. I cannot live if he is lost. I will not live without him,” and “my son defeated the narvai-ub; my son has brought me home”. Sohjos had collapsed and never truly recovered. But, without Thurl, he’d have died in the narvai-ub lair. Thurl had failed to save his father’s life, but maybe he’d saved him in other ways.
“I wish he could be here,” Thurl finally said. “He would know what to do next; how to lead the Racroft into a new hunting ground; into a new era.”
“He doesn’t need to be,” said Iassa. “He left you here for that. You are his lasting legacy.”
Thurl finally let himself relax, for the first time since the narvai-ub attack. He could feel his own uncertainty and weakness overtake him and he began crying, weeping, for everything he had lost and all the battles he’d been forced to fight and the exhaustion of living up to potential he didn’t know he possessed. The tears streamed from his eyes and soaked the strip of chunacat cloak over them. Finally, he reached up to his tender face and peeled the strip off his face.
The protective layer of flesh had melted off his eyes. They were tender and sore. He rubbed them with his fists, letting the tears roll down his hands.
When he dropped his hands to his lap and lifted his head, he knew something was wrong. There were shapes in his head, like echoes without sound: the rough texture of the rocky perch; the droplets of snow blowing past the cavern; the leaping, flickering movement of the fire liquid as it jumped off the dry roots.
He pushed back until he was pressed against the wall of the mountain. The soundless shapes in his head remained. It was as if he could feel the textures without touching; as though his whiskers and follicles were feeding him information in still, calm air currents; like he was receiving echoes without clicking or grunting, and the echoes didn’t fade. They were constant, shifting with the movement of Iassa’s fire.
Thurl turned his head to Iassa, to click and tell her that something was wrong. When he did, she was a shape: more beautiful than any he had felt with his fingers or follicles; an echo more detailed than any before it.
“Thurl, your eyes,” Iassa said with amazement. “They’re open. They’re focused! Can you see me? Can you see, Thurl?!”
She was jumping up and down, waving her arms over her head. Somehow, without clicking or taking off his chunacat cloak, he knew this. The shapes of her were in his mind. This was sight. This was seeing. This was Iassa’s world.
Thurl moved his head in all directions, taking in all the shapes and textures, processing information faster than he had ever known. There were mountain crags a long way off, much further than any echo could detect, and movement on the hillocks far away from the cavern mouth. There was spots in the sky, like prickles on the flesh; little fires like Iassa’s, but a long, long way up; millions of them; maybe hundreds of millions.
Against this texture, this prickle of sight, there was a floating spot of emptiness; a blank shape moving with the wind, spinning through the skies and chasing the breeze. Thurl followed its movement, without clicks or grunts, without touch or sound; he followed the path of the empty sky until it tumbled and fell and landed on the snow, pressed against the hillock that sat before the cave.
Thurl climbed down from the rocky perch, curious about the shape; if it was real; if it had form; if he could hold it; if he could truly see. The further Thurl got from Iassa’s fire, the less he could sense the sensation of sight. He returned to the world he knew best; his home. He clicked and grunted and dropped his cloak and let his follicles tell him where the world formed around him.
He found it – the shape – fluttering in the breeze, caught on a stone on the side of the hillock. He picked it up and ran his hands across it. Immediately, he knew what it was.
He ran back to the cavern, his heart racing, his mind pulsing, his thoughts bursting.
“Iassa!” He called. “He’s come home! He’s come home!”
Thurl climbed up to the rocky perch and put Iassa’s hands on the shape he held in his own trembling grip.
Together they saw it in the flickering flame of Iassa’s fire. Sohjos had returned to praise his son.
Thurl ran his fingers over the indentations on the dried flesh; the life story of Sohjos; his achievements and awards; his stature in the community; his family; his pride. As Thurl felt the symbol that represented himself, a blast of wind rushed down from the crowded skies and pulled the parchment out of Thurl’s hands.
Sohjos was floating on the winds again.
Thurl clicked and grunted until the echoes went silent. Then, he opened his eyes and followed the flutter of the shape against the crowded texture of the sky until it was so small, he could no longer distinguish it. He was going to be a Leader like his father; greater than Sohjos; greater than any Leader before. And, one day, when he had children of his own, they would be greater Racroft than him.
This was the legacy Sohjos left. It would be the legacy Thurl would continue. He had protected his father and brought him home. Now, somehow, Thurl felt like his father was protecting him; would always be protecting him; not through action or thought, but through the guidance and the wisdom and the legacy he’d left within Thurl.
Thurl sat on the perch, silent and content. He slipped his hand in Iassa’s, and used his damaged eyes to follow the movement of the fire until it dwindled and glowed and returned to darkness.
THE END
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan M. Vick is an award-winning playwright and novelist. His play, “A Bridge To Nowhere Is Just A Pier” won the 2005 Eclectic Company Theatre Hurricane Season award. His short story The Tale of the Torso won the 1998 Orlando Erotic Writing Competition. It is currently included in his book of short stories by the same name. Jonathan currently writes in the Orlando, FL area with his beautiful wife and three kids.
He can be contacted at [email protected].
For more of Jonathan’s books and plays
Check out his website:
http://jonathanmvick.com
Orphan Tribe, Orphan Planet Page 23