"Wraithvine? Yes I knew hir. Met 'em when I was a little. My favorite memory? Fixed my eyes so I got to see a rainbow." -- Anon Guest
Red-rash had taken my sight, but I had learned from the bats. I couldn't squeak as high as they could, but I could click. It took me a while, but I became used to a world of echoes. On noisy market days, I used the stick. People either tried to rob me or tried to give me money on those days.
They think 'disabled' means 'stupid' or 'incapable'. They think wrong.
I've tripped many an aspiring thief in order to recover my things. And told many a charitable soul that their money didn't pay off their pity. I've even had many frauds attempt to restore my eyesight. Only one such offer was true to their words.
I had just finished selling my weaving to Dran, the merchant I trusted the best, when a stranger who smelled of fresh rain and strange spices asked me, "Were you born without sight, or did you lose it?"
"Red rash," I said, counting my money into my purse. "One set took half my sight, and the other one took the rest. Someone said I should have caught them younger, but it was useless advice in the end. I barely remember being able to see any more, so there's little to miss."
"If you could have your sight back, would you wish it?"
"I admit, I'm curious," I told them. "If I could have working eyes for any reason, it would be to throw off all those people pitying me for being blind. I'd rather earn my money rather than having it thrust in my palm with oh you poor thing. I am not a poor thing."
"Not with the ability to weave that fine a quality of watered cloth," noted the stranger.
I could feel the heat of their hand in front of my nose and brow. "That's very rude," I began to say, and then noticed. I could see light and shadows. Another pass. Colours and shapes.
Pass by pass the world came back to me. Definition. Depth. Focus. Clarity. I could see an Elf with mottled skin and a riotous patchwork hat. With... something... moving in it?
Another pass of their hand. Hir hand, I realised, as I recognised this Elf from all the nursery tales about hir. This was none other than Wraithvine hirself.
What a legend like hir was doing with a nobody like me simply blew my mind.
"Don't bother goggling at me," ze smiled, pointing. "Look up yonder."
I turned as ze ordered, and beheld a mundane miracle cast in the sky by none other than the sun and the rain. A rainbow. The first I could remember in my life.
"I'd forgotten," I whispered. I tried to hold off the stinging in my eyes as they wanted to weep. "I'd forgotten it all..." When I turned back, eyes leaking tears, to ask how I could thank hir... there was no sign of the Eternal Elf.
I'd have to pay that favour forward, I supposed, by helping any others in any way I could.
[Photo by Harry Quan on Unsplash]
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