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“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.
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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.
Khaki QOD:And today's story is the first of two pots of.
Khaki QOD:Unseen by Madison Scott Clary, whose graph Romania occasionally
Khaki QOD:gets the better of her.
Khaki QOD:Unseeing is one of the stories featured.
Khaki QOD:In the prehistoric very anthology when the world was young available on December 1st.
Khaki QOD:Excavate more information.
Khaki QOD:At F H F S dot Inc.
Khaki QOD:You could find more of her writing from short stories and poems to novels
Khaki QOD:and a memoir over at Macchio dot Inc.
Khaki QOD:Please enjoy.
Khaki QOD:Unseen.
Khaki QOD:Bye Madison, Scott Clary.
Khaki QOD:But one of two.
Khaki QOD:Read for you by the author herself.
Madison Scott-Clary:On the morning of every day when the days
Madison Scott-Clary:are warm and there is no rain.
Madison Scott-Clary:On days when LT knows when it is day and when it is night, he will gather
Madison Scott-Clary:his ingredients onto a small board and sit at the entrance to his cave
Madison Scott-Clary:and make his incense for three days.
Madison Scott-Clary:Hence, LT works with measured care for.
Madison Scott-Clary:He does not want to injure the pads of his paws, nor Nick has already
Madison Scott-Clary:scuffed claws nor shave off any of his fur nor Ying preserve him.
Madison Scott-Clary:Damage his carefully honed equip.
Madison Scott-Clary:He works with measured care and a practice slowness with a practice
Madison Scott-Clary:known to one who holds the highest devotion to his labor and to his Lord.
Madison Scott-Clary:Luke works with particular care when employing the use of his knife for
Madison Scott-Clary:he has cut himself before he has cut himself and knows that not only will
Madison Scott-Clary:this spoil his incense for the day, but it will leave his pads aching and sore.
Madison Scott-Clary:Will leave his fur, matted and sticky, will leave a thin layer of
Madison Scott-Clary:blood upon all he touches until the flow stops and the wound scabs over.
Madison Scott-Clary:Knows that he would have to make his way down to the river to wash knows two,
Madison Scott-Clary:after a particularly bad accident with his knife, that the stick he uses to
Madison Scott-Clary:guide his way down the path gets slippery and would need to be cleaned as well.
Madison Scott-Clary:That to bind the wound with the use of only one paw carries some
Madison Scott-Clary:particular difficulty, and so he gathers his ingredients and tools
Madison Scott-Clary:onto his board and carries them to the entrance to his cave where he
Madison Scott-Clary:sits and works with Measured care.
Madison Scott-Clary:He works from left to right because he holds the knife and hammer in his
Madison Scott-Clary:right paw and he builds the scent from bottom to top because that is how he
Madison Scott-Clary:has laid out his ingredients and because it is the base notes of the scent that
Madison Scott-Clary:are the most forgiving to balance.
Madison Scott-Clary:Begins then with a crushed root of naden, which previously he had pounded
Madison Scott-Clary:and which now he lays against the board and measures 10 claw widths thereof and
Madison Scott-Clary:cuts with his knife to this is mixed.
Madison Scott-Clary:10 teardrops of common MAs, the width of a claw on holier days he may
Madison Scott-Clary:find himself using COPA in its place and indeed he may use that later.
Madison Scott-Clary:For now, he attempts to find nodules the size of one of his claws without
Madison Scott-Clary:requiring that it be cut or broken less.
Madison Scott-Clary:His senses be dazzled and to the balance, lost the middle notes come
Madison Scott-Clary:next and Luke takes a fingertips length of sweetgrass and puts it
Madison Scott-Clary:into the bowl with the base notes.
Madison Scott-Clary:The scent of sweetgrass is yes sweet, but it provides also the bulk of the material
Madison Scott-Clary:that will burn throughout the day.
Madison Scott-Clary:To this, he adds sweet flag root, which has been carefully washed and tongue and.
Madison Scott-Clary:He grates this first with his knife before adding it to the bowl, scraping
Madison Scott-Clary:the blade, almost perpendicular along the route to shave off a fibrous powder.
Madison Scott-Clary:These are all taken together in a stone mortar and ground with a stone
Madison Scott-Clary:P to pulverize them into a uniform powder, which he checks with gentle
Madison Scott-Clary:touches of his last fingertip on his left hand, which is the most.
Madison Scott-Clary:Judges with his nose and deeming it correct.
Madison Scott-Clary:Finishes now with the lone top note of a precious dried pod of Carm
Madison Scott-Clary:and what he judges to be one third again and weight of Maco powder.
Madison Scott-Clary:To bind the incense to build a scent from the bottom up is to
Madison Scott-Clary:tell the first of three prayers of creation to ying and loot works with
Madison Scott-Clary:devotion in his heart as he grind.
Madison Scott-Clary:He does not speak his prayer.
Madison Scott-Clary:The sound of stone against stone are his words.
Madison Scott-Clary:He does not look up to the heavens where he knows ying to reside for
Madison Scott-Clary:sight, does not the sense he possesses allows instead his Lord's presence to
Madison Scott-Clary:pierce his heart and travel down his limbs and guide the motions of his paw.
Madison Scott-Clary:The powder of the incense thus created is sifted into a small bowl.
Madison Scott-Clary:The finest silt brushed from the mortar with a very tip of his tail.
Madison Scott-Clary:To mature incense in the quiet and the dry.
Madison Scott-Clary:And the cool is to tell the second of three prayers of creation to ying.
Madison Scott-Clary:And loot again works with devotion in his heart as he unli himself
Madison Scott-Clary:from where he had been kneeling and carries the bold to the back of the
Madison Scott-Clary:cave where it will always be driest.
Madison Scott-Clary:He does not speak his prayer.
Madison Scott-Clary:The sound of his paw padding and dirt and fingertips dragging along
Madison Scott-Clary:the stone wall are his words.
Madison Scott-Clary:He does not look to the shelf containing the other two incense balls for sight.
Madison Scott-Clary:Does not a sense he possesses, allows instead his Lord's presence to pierce
Madison Scott-Clary:his heart and travel down his limbs to place the ball beside the other two.
Madison Scott-Clary:Hut then cleans his board, bringing it back into his cave, and replacing
Madison Scott-Clary:unused ingredients in their bowls, jars, or baskets by touch and by scent.
Madison Scott-Clary:At last, he picks up the right most bowl in the line and scoots the
Madison Scott-Clary:other two up into its place and carries it to the mouth of his cave.
Madison Scott-Clary:Along the way, he bends down and lifts a dish filled with ash
Madison Scott-Clary:and carries it with him as well.
Madison Scott-Clary:To lay the incense trail is to tell the third and final prayer of creation.
Madison Scott-Clary:Toing and loot works still with the devotion in his heart as he tamps
Madison Scott-Clary:down the ash and the dish into a smooth plane with a tip of his finger.
Madison Scott-Clary:Then draws a careful furrow in the fine powder sowing incense in its wake.
Madison Scott-Clary:He does not speak his prayer.
Madison Scott-Clary:The rhythm of the tamping and the quiet hush of incense and ash are his words.
Madison Scott-Clary:He does not look to the boxy spiral.
Madison Scott-Clary:He draws for sight, does not dissent he possesses, allows instead his
Madison Scott-Clary:Lord's presence to pierce his heart and travel down his limbs and guide
Madison Scott-Clary:his left fore claw while the right hand follows by touch, dropping
Madison Scott-Clary:the powdered incense in its wake.
Madison Scott-Clary:The presence of his Lord burns bright within him.
Madison Scott-Clary:Loot does not know light from darkness, but were he pressed to answer?
Madison Scott-Clary:He would say that yots presence is that of light, their absence, that of dark.
Madison Scott-Clary:And by this point in the day, loot is filled with light.
Madison Scott-Clary:The prayers of destruction follow the prayers of creation
Madison Scott-Clary:against a crease in the rocket.
Madison Scott-Clary:The entrance of his cave is his fire pit.
Madison Scott-Clary:The night before he brought in sticks and barked from the near Woods
Madison Scott-Clary:and laid them at the feet of the.
Madison Scott-Clary:In the mornings after preparing his incense, he begins the first prayer
Madison Scott-Clary:of destruction, breaking down the sticks and shredding the bark into
Madison Scott-Clary:tinder and kindling the sound of the crack of dry wood and the terror of
Madison Scott-Clary:fiber spark his words, the spirit of his Lord guiding his every movement.
Madison Scott-Clary:The second prayer of destruction is the forging or rekindling of the fire.
Madison Scott-Clary:If there are embers left, then the words of this prayer are the sound of
Madison Scott-Clary:loot's breath against them and the slow crack of kindling catching a light.
Madison Scott-Clary:If the coals are out, then the words of this prayer is the singing
Madison Scott-Clary:of the bow drill between his feet.
Madison Scott-Clary:Thermoception stretch taut as he strains to feel the warmth of the
Madison Scott-Clary:new flame starting in the Tinder.
Madison Scott-Clary:The third and final prayer of destruction that loot offers to Ying
Madison Scott-Clary:is that of the lighting of the incense.
Madison Scott-Clary:He works with the same measured care as he lights a punk from the fire, the spirit
Madison Scott-Clary:of his Lord singing along his limb and touches it to the small amount of incense
Madison Scott-Clary:At the center of the trail, he has built the words of the, this prayer are silence.
Madison Scott-Clary:Only now does he speak his prayers aloud and by now he is overflowing with light.
Madison Scott-Clary:It seeps out through his fur, falls from his mouth, and honey
Madison Scott-Clary:drops, shines from dark and dies.
Madison Scott-Clary:Ying is with him now as he chans, as the smoke reads him as the scent of his
Madison Scott-Clary:labors fills his cave and the clearing and rises up past the tree tops.
Madison Scott-Clary:Ying is with loot and I am as well.
Madison Scott-Clary:After prayer, loot feeds his fire and sits for a while before it to ensure
Madison Scott-Clary:that the sound of the wood burning is just as it should be and no louder,
Madison Scott-Clary:and that the heat of the fire is neither too hot nor too cool for.
Madison Scott-Clary:He knows that a hot burning fire that roared and rushed with the voice
Madison Scott-Clary:of Yots anger was one that would at best burn out too soon, and he had
Madison Scott-Clary:been taught that at worst it would claim souls as easily as would.
Madison Scott-Clary:With the smoke of the fire, mingling with that of his incense, with the
Madison Scott-Clary:scent of his devotion lingering in his nose and clinging to his
Madison Scott-Clary:fur and stinging sightless eyes.
Madison Scott-Clary:He takes up his knife and walking stick and pads slowly down the path
Madison Scott-Clary:from his cave to the section of river.
Madison Scott-Clary:He calls his own his feet, guide him with soft shuffling his stick, guides
Madison Scott-Clary:him with gentle tapping his ears.
Madison Scott-Clary:Guide him with the sounds of the river ying, guides him with
Madison Scott-Clary:their hand on his shoulder.
Madison Scott-Clary:At the river by his cave, there is a pool where the water flows out
Madison Scott-Clary:from between two rocks, and it is across that gap that he has strung.
Madison Scott-Clary:Annette, Glute sets his stick aside and crawls on hands and knees to one
Madison Scott-Clary:of the rocks, and with a long practice swish of his fingers through the water.
Madison Scott-Clary:He catches up the cords of the far end of the net from where they lay on the
Madison Scott-Clary:bank and sweeps his arm around to draw the net around and back toward him.
Madison Scott-Clary:I have smiled on him today and in the net he feels the dancing of fish and upon
Madison Scott-Clary:dragging the net asho feels and its knots.
Madison Scott-Clary:Also, the hard shelled bodies of the crawfish that live their silent lives
Madison Scott-Clary:on the bottom of the silt bedded river, the net entire is laid flat upon the
Madison Scott-Clary:shore to let the fish and crustaceans drown in air while loot cleans his paws
Madison Scott-Clary:and knife in the water of the stream.
Madison Scott-Clary:To wash in cold water is to speak a prayer of cleanliness to Ying, but
Madison Scott-Clary:also to me, to me who knows the meaning of light dancing on the clear water.
Madison Scott-Clary:In a way, the God of the Sun cannot, in a way that blind loot cannot.
Madison Scott-Clary:And so I sustain myself with those prayers even as the aesthetic
Madison Scott-Clary:guts, the fish with measured care.
Madison Scott-Clary:Washes once more in the stream and then with practice slowness, strings his
Madison Scott-Clary:net once more, letting the constant stream of water flow brightly through
Madison Scott-Clary:the pounded and nodded reeds to catch fish to catch food dripping and naked.
Madison Scott-Clary:Loot crawls upstream along the shore, fingers crawling among the grass until
Madison Scott-Clary:he comes across the front of a fiddle head fern, of which he plucks two.
Madison Scott-Clary:Washes these then wraps them in his daily catch of fish and sluggish
Madison Scott-Clary:crus, and packs around the bundle.
Madison Scott-Clary:Clay from the riverbank takes then his stick in hand and taps his way
Madison Scott-Clary:back to his cave, where after banking a portion of the fire, he nestles his
Madison Scott-Clary:bundle among the hot coals until it is dry and parched on the outside.
Madison Scott-Clary:In the meantime, he walks carefully into the Woods, perpendicular to
Madison Scott-Clary:the hill on which his cave rests.
Madison Scott-Clary:Brushing aside further frons to the place where his nose tells him he may
Madison Scott-Clary:have his toilet after finishing another trip to the river is made this time
Madison Scott-Clary:carrying a jug slung over his shoulder to be filled with water for his camp.
Madison Scott-Clary:By then, the smell of steamed fish is beginning to escape from the
Madison Scott-Clary:clay baker that he has formed.
Madison Scott-Clary:And the time to break his fast is upon him.
Madison Scott-Clary:His walking stick hard and long cured is used to drag the baked clay from
Madison Scott-Clary:the embers and the jug of water put in its place to bring to a boil.
Madison Scott-Clary:He says a short prayer to ying for his bounty, for his food, and for the taking
Madison Scott-Clary:of three lives in order to fill his belly.
Madison Scott-Clary:And by the time the last word is finished.
Madison Scott-Clary:The clay is cool enough to tap and crack apart to expose his steamed food.
Madison Scott-Clary:I up from that prayer as well for I provided him with this meal.
Madison Scott-Clary:He sets the spent clay aside and unfurls the ferns from around his food.
Madison Scott-Clary:His first bite is that of the curled heads of the frons, seasoned with the fat of
Madison Scott-Clary:the fish and the heady scent of crawfish.
Madison Scott-Clary:His second and third bites are of the flesh of the fish scraped away
Madison Scott-Clary:from soft bones with sharp teeth.
Madison Scott-Clary:The rest of his meal is a silent contemplation of what wonderful
Madison Scott-Clary:complexities the silty life of a crustacean must hold as he pulls the tails
Madison Scott-Clary:from the crawfish, eats the meat within, and sucks the butter from the heads.
Madison Scott-Clary:Fish head and skeleton and crawfish cells are placed in the jug of the water now
Madison Scott-Clary:boiling the makings of a thin broth that will be his sustenance for the rest of
Madison Scott-Clary:the day, for the third and final time.
Madison Scott-Clary:Loot washes that day and I revel in the act of his careful attention
Madison Scott-Clary:to his postprandial grooming.
Madison Scott-Clary:This is the time when he ensures that his pelt is clean and free of ticks and fleas.
Madison Scott-Clary:This is the time when he massages the dirt out of his paw pans.
Madison Scott-Clary:This is the time when he brushes his whiskers.
Madison Scott-Clary:This is the time when he lays his fur in order.
Madison Scott-Clary:This is the time when he makes himself pure in body before Ying having
Madison Scott-Clary:already made himself pure in spirit.
Madison Scott-Clary:Two.
Madison Scott-Clary:This is the time when he makes himself pure before me.
Madison Scott-Clary:Though he knows it not, this is the time when he gives thought to
Madison Scott-Clary:the direction his fur is facing.
Madison Scott-Clary:This is the time when he gives thought to any dirt which may cover him.
Madison Scott-Clary:This is the time when he blind pecan, blind Fisher puts thought, however
Madison Scott-Clary:abstract into what a watcher may.
Madison Scott-Clary:Lives his life in prayer and devotion.
Madison Scott-Clary:It is a life that has lived ascending in a steady spiral of years for time
Madison Scott-Clary:moves upward, and yet is echoed below by the change of days, the change
Madison Scott-Clary:of weeks, the change of seasons.
Madison Scott-Clary:This soft spring is an echo of last soft spring.
Madison Scott-Clary:Beneath it.
Madison Scott-Clary:It is anti to the autumn that will come cycles within cycles.
Madison Scott-Clary:Spirals within spirals this morning too is an echo of the day,
Madison Scott-Clary:beneath it, behind it in the past.
Madison Scott-Clary:His days are defined by the cycle of incense, prayer, fishing, foraging.
Madison Scott-Clary:He knows that it is day when he wakes, when he feels the warmth from the Sun.
Madison Scott-Clary:He knows when it is night, when he feels the warmth fade.
Madison Scott-Clary:He knows when it is morning because he hears the bird sing.
Madison Scott-Clary:He knows that it is night when the bird song of the day settles
Madison Scott-Clary:into the course of insects clean.
Madison Scott-Clary:Now he meditates on this.
Madison Scott-Clary:He meditates on cycles.
Madison Scott-Clary:He meditates on warmth and coolness.
Madison Scott-Clary:He meditates on his relation to it and on his relation to Ying.
Madison Scott-Clary:He has surmised, for instance, that his fur is of a particular quality that the
Madison Scott-Clary:Sun is drawn to, and he has surmised that this is as worthy of prayer as the
Madison Scott-Clary:incense he makes for was not the Sun.
Madison Scott-Clary:With Ying, the Sun is drawn to him as it is drawn to the rocks and
Madison Scott-Clary:the dirt and the bark of the trees.
Madison Scott-Clary:It is drawn to them and it dwells within them.
Madison Scott-Clary:For the Sun powers him as warmth, and the Sun fills the trees with a captive warmth.
Madison Scott-Clary:That is released by fire.
Madison Scott-Clary:And are there not things that the Sun shies away from the Sun shies away
Madison Scott-Clary:from night, from water, from the cool fresh leaves that interrupt it for
Madison Scott-Clary:one need, not sight to understand, directionality to understand shade
Madison Scott-Clary:as a consequence of sun's arrow.
Madison Scott-Clary:Loot lays on his back to let the suns arrow dry him to let that warmth pull the
Madison Scott-Clary:water from his fur and the chill from his bones, and then he lays on his front and
Madison Scott-Clary:let Yots light bathe his back as well.
Madison Scott-Clary:Not all prayer loot knows is in ritual.
Madison Scott-Clary:In ritual lies comfort.
Madison Scott-Clary:In ritual lies service in ritual lies the active participation of worship.
Madison Scott-Clary:That portion of devotion that is a conversation with his Lord.
Madison Scott-Clary:The time of ritual is the time when loot may speak up and say to Ying, I am here.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am yours.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am your vessel of light, and all that I do is in service to you and
Madison Scott-Clary:by my existence, my every action.
Madison Scott-Clary:I serve your glory.
Madison Scott-Clary:Not all prayer is in service ding either.
Madison Scott-Clary:For some of it is to their servant, to himself in service of their servant.
Madison Scott-Clary:He keeps himself clean and free of sin and distraction in service to
Madison Scott-Clary:their servant and to their servants.
Madison Scott-Clary:He prepares the incense that reads himself and the village below in service
Madison Scott-Clary:of their servant and their servants.
Madison Scott-Clary:He subsist only off a single meal drawn from the river and whatever
Madison Scott-Clary:alms the village cares to provide him.
Madison Scott-Clary:The ingredients for the incense that he makes in turn.
Madison Scott-Clary:But in meditation lies the comfortable companionship in meditation.
Madison Scott-Clary:Lies love in meditation lies reassurance and trust.
Madison Scott-Clary:The time of meditation is the time when loot may sit next to ying in
Madison Scott-Clary:silence and appreciate the wonder of them and the world that they have.
Madison Scott-Clary:So this morning he lays in the Sun next to Ying, beside Ying and
Madison Scott-Clary:Revels in all that Ying has created, rather than singing praises to them.
Madison Scott-Clary:Because it is important, even for the aesthetic to understand the beauty of
Madison Scott-Clary:the world, the wonder and delight in it.
Madison Scott-Clary:It is important for.
Madison Scott-Clary:To feel the way his fur tugs at the Sun collects the warmth and the way
Madison Scott-Clary:the Sun pulls the water from him.
Madison Scott-Clary:It is important for hut to feel the ground beneath him and hear in its
Madison Scott-Clary:silence the praises to his Lord.
Madison Scott-Clary:It is important for L to marvel in the way Yots Sun shuns the underside of leaves and
Madison Scott-Clary:follows the bark of the trees on the side.
Madison Scott-Clary:It faces.
Madison Scott-Clary:It is important for hut to bake until he's panting and gulping in breaths of air.
Madison Scott-Clary:And then it is important for him to crawl back into his cave stricken from
Madison Scott-Clary:the Sun by the laws of directionality that he understands on a visceral
Madison Scott-Clary:level in lieu of a visual one for sight is not a sense he possesses.
Madison Scott-Clary:And then, It is time for him to remove his simmering broth from the fire and
Madison Scott-Clary:to sip it from the cool shade of his cave, straining it through sharp teeth to
Madison Scott-Clary:prevent fine caribs and finer bones from getting caught in his throat unsalted,
Madison Scott-Clary:but nonetheless savory until despite the heat of the broth, his thirst is quenched.
Madison Scott-Clary:This knows loot relishes is the cycle of the day, the cycle of
Madison Scott-Clary:the year, and his Lord promises.
Madison Scott-Clary:The cycle of his life for he will surely be reborn when the
Madison Scott-Clary:hours of his life slow to a stop.
Madison Scott-Clary:And this ying is a liar.
Madison Scott-Clary:But it is a kind lie, a lie of omission for when LT dies.
Madison Scott-Clary:I will take him unto me.
Madison Scott-Clary:I will take him and his acts in life together into my bowl and crush
Madison Scott-Clary:and need, and he will rejoice with me and I will rejoice with him.
Madison Scott-Clary:And then whatever rest he has now, whatever glory he knows now, whatever
Madison Scott-Clary:elation he may feel shall be pale in comparison to what comes after.
Madison Scott-Clary:Crais and works for the rest of the day.
Madison Scott-Clary:For today is the day that he makes incense for the town.
Madison Scott-Clary:Below this week is the week of fasting, and next week is the week of rejoicing,
Madison Scott-Clary:and so this week he must prepare for them.
Madison Scott-Clary:Three times the normal amount of incense as this is the week they
Madison Scott-Clary:subsist on smoke until they cannot tell.
Madison Scott-Clary:Zita promises him the white thread from the black thread after the
Madison Scott-Clary:Sun sets and the cool night comes.
Madison Scott-Clary:This is the week they live on prayer, and next is the week they live on celebration.
Madison Scott-Clary:When they bake small cakes in the heat of their fires, in the heat of their ovens,
Madison Scott-Clary:and five of which Zita will leave for him.
Madison Scott-Clary:Zita may or may not be her name, or perhaps only her title.
Madison Scott-Clary:He does not know because beyond a few kind words, she will only pray
Madison Scott-Clary:with him and pick up the incense from the edge of the clearing before
Madison Scott-Clary:his cave and leave in its place.
Madison Scott-Clary:The alms that the village provides of flatbread and berries of the ingredients
Madison Scott-Clary:for the incense, which they grow or perhaps purchase from other villages
Madison Scott-Clary:who may purchase turn from villages going south, going south and east.
Madison Scott-Clary:So today he retrieves his board once more from his cave and on it stacks all the
Madison Scott-Clary:ingredients for the incense of the week of fasting that will feed the village
Madison Scott-Clary:and the two amphora that will hold it.
Madison Scott-Clary:He sings wordless hymns to himself as he works with measured care to
Madison Scott-Clary:cut the sweet grass to shave the calamus root to count the card ponds.
Madison Scott-Clary:He sings to Ying as he pounds and grinds batch after batch of incense
Madison Scott-Clary:until his hands are humming until his pans are singing along with him.
Madison Scott-Clary:And then he takes his board back to his cave and returns with a stack of
Madison Scott-Clary:ingredients for the incense of the week of feasting with the base notes
Madison Scott-Clary:of cassia and vanilla, the middle notes of ginger and turmeric and the top
Madison Scott-Clary:note of staris, the spices that season.
Madison Scott-Clary:The cakes they bake in celebration, and these he pounds
Madison Scott-Clary:with laughter and with tears.
Madison Scott-Clary:For, with celebration comes morning and with devotion.
Madison Scott-Clary:The sudden feeling of loneliness brought on by, laughing by oneself.
Madison Scott-Clary:It is evening and he can feel the sun's arrow striking horizontal by
Madison Scott-Clary:the time he finishes and when he steps out of his cave, cradling his three
Madison Scott-Clary:amoria to his chest, he can smell even above the incense Zita sitting
Madison Scott-Clary:at the entrance to the clearing.
Madison Scott-Clary:He walks carefully until he can hear her breathing and then sits cross-legged
Madison Scott-Clary:before her and sets the VS down between them and they pray together.
Madison Scott-Clary:They who make the world, they who end it, they who bring the
Madison Scott-Clary:thunder in Suah, which fell in Suah Re, which rose from the ashes.
Madison Scott-Clary:We offer the words of our forefathers.
Madison Scott-Clary:We offer the smoke of our forefathers.
Madison Scott-Clary:We offer our hearts to you.
Madison Scott-Clary:In Yots name, we pray in Yots world, we pray in Yots own voice.
Madison Scott-Clary:We pray by the light of the Sun.
Madison Scott-Clary:We pray by the heat of the fire we.
Madison Scott-Clary:And on until the Sun zero has wandered off course and into the night sky
Madison Scott-Clary:This week, this week of fasting, Zita has not brought him alms.
Madison Scott-Clary:There are no soft leaves of flatbread or ingredients for incense.
Madison Scott-Clary:Just as one year ago, there were no leaves of bread, and one year
Madison Scott-Clary:before that there were no leaves of.
Madison Scott-Clary:This week loot does not smile kindly to Zita as she collects the amph and walks
Madison Scott-Clary:the path down the slope to the village.
Madison Scott-Clary:Because the week of prayer is also a fasting from emotions and worldly
Madison Scott-Clary:attachments, and the next day it truly is a fast for there are no fish in his net.
Madison Scott-Clary:And if there are no fish in his net, he knows that he must not collect the fiddle
Madison Scott-Clary:head ferns, and instead of savory, Luke drinks only boiled water, hot and cleansed
Madison Scott-Clary:by fire, and he spends the rest of his day in meditation and he goes to bed hungry.
Madison Scott-Clary:I watch as he sleeps, fitful, and leave for him to fish in his net
Madison Scott-Clary:for his unknowing devotion to me.
Madison Scott-Clary:It is the last night of the week of fasting, and it is the 30th year that
Madison Scott-Clary:loot has served Ying and myself that I have decided to change him and by
Madison Scott-Clary:changing him, change the world for while.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am the God of water and the God of watching and the God of death.
Madison Scott-Clary:Am I not also a trickster God?
Madison Scott-Clary:I am the trickster God who confounded ying in his creation of
Madison Scott-Clary:the smooth planes of the world by carving the land with my rivers.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am the trickster God who confounded the Lord by setting the moon and the sky
Madison Scott-Clary:to tug at the waters of their oceans in tides, even when the moon is not seen.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am the trickster God who brought death to yots ever living world.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am the trickster God and my trouble will come back at me 30 fold.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am sure, but Loot is the 30th aesthetic who has served me and I am ready.
Madison Scott-Clary:Loot has once more gone to sleep, hungry, belly filled with prayer,
Madison Scott-Clary:and contrition and boiled water.
Madison Scott-Clary:No fish in the net, no ferns to be had no stale leaves a
Madison Scott-Clary:flatbread or Sun dried berri.
Madison Scott-Clary:. I come to him.
Madison Scott-Clary:Then I come to him and I touch the back of his neck, then the crown of his
Madison Scott-Clary:head, then the lids of his eyes and the scars around them, and then I sit in
Madison Scott-Clary:the clearing and wait for him to waken.
Madison Scott-Clary:I sit and watch for that is my jurisdiction.
Madison Scott-Clary:When the pecan stirs in the slow warming of the day, his eyes drift open as
Madison Scott-Clary:usual to the slit of relaxed muscles.
Madison Scott-Clary:That is his.
Madison Scott-Clary:And then he shouts.
Madison Scott-Clary:He shouts because I am a trickster God.
Madison Scott-Clary:And after 40 years of life, after 30 times, 30 years of blind aesthetics,
Madison Scott-Clary:serving Ying and myself, I am ready for change and I have given him sight.
Madison Scott-Clary:I know his terror, his confusion and his instinctual need to escape.
Madison Scott-Clary:And so I watch him scramble back into his cave and press his face to the back wall
Madison Scott-Clary:for minutes on end, barely breathing.
Madison Scott-Clary:Eyes clenched shut.
Madison Scott-Clary:Y.
Madison Scott-Clary:He cries at last, my Lord, my Lord.
Madison Scott-Clary:What is happening?
Madison Scott-Clary:I answer In Yots stead, you see he pants into the silence that follows.
Madison Scott-Clary:I know his thoughts.
Madison Scott-Clary:I know that he hears ying within his heart and within his
Madison Scott-Clary:bones and within his breath.
Madison Scott-Clary:I know that I have spoken to him in the language of sound and that
Madison Scott-Clary:this brings with it its own fear.
Madison Scott-Clary:You see, I say.
Madison Scott-Clary:You are not ying.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am two.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am the God of the moon and the water, and of watching and of death.
Madison Scott-Clary:Two.
Madison Scott-Clary:Two.
Madison Scott-Clary:I repeat and smile at his confusion, but ying is the Lord of all things.
Madison Scott-Clary:How are you the God of these things?
Madison Scott-Clary:Ying is the God of all things, and they are the God of me.
Madison Scott-Clary:But those things are not under their direct dominion.
Madison Scott-Clary:Some are undermine, and I am the God of watching, of looking, of seeing.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am the God of water and I am with you when you fish and bathe.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am the God of the moon.
Madison Scott-Clary:And when it shines down on you, I am with.
Madison Scott-Clary:When Ying is with you, I am as well.
Madison Scott-Clary:When you serve Ying in these ways, you also serve me tears course freely
Madison Scott-Clary:down his cheek and he says, it hurts to see you have never seen before.
Madison Scott-Clary:Come out of your cave.
Madison Scott-Clary:He does not move and so I wait.
Madison Scott-Clary:I know that he will need to attend to his day soon, and I know that he is
Madison Scott-Clary:praying to Ying and feels the compulsion to perform his acts of service, his
Madison Scott-Clary:rituals, and I know that the village below is waking up to ready itself for
Madison Scott-Clary:a day and night and week of celebration.
Madison Scott-Clary:So I.
Madison Scott-Clary:Two Ying waits because although I sense their wrath on the horizon, I think
Madison Scott-Clary:that it will not come yet because this is also new for them, and they also
Madison Scott-Clary:watch eventually Lou to crawls eyes, clinch shut on hands and knees crawls
Madison Scott-Clary:into the Sun and sits crosslegged in the center of his clearing.
Madison Scott-Clary:Open your eyes.
Madison Scott-Clary:He does not.
Madison Scott-Clary:I know that he can see the warmth of the Sun behind closed eyelids
Madison Scott-Clary:showing dusky orange through them.
Madison Scott-Clary:I know that he can sense the shadows cast in the sun's arrow by
Madison Scott-Clary:the leaves above and around him.
Madison Scott-Clary:I know that even this seeing is too much for him.
Madison Scott-Clary:Open your eyes, Lud, faithful.
Madison Scott-Clary:You are not ying.
Madison Scott-Clary:You cannot Command.
Madison Scott-Clary:No, I say I cannot Command you, but you are as faithful to me as you are to
Madison Scott-Clary:them in the ways that I have described.
Madison Scott-Clary:And so I ask of you this small obeyance.
Madison Scott-Clary:Loot ponders this for a long while.
Madison Scott-Clary:His tail flitting agitated behind him, drawing praises to me in the packed earth.
Madison Scott-Clary:Finally, he opens his eyes a crack, a squint.
Madison Scott-Clary:He opens his eyes and looks at the ground before him.
Madison Scott-Clary:He looks at his naked body.
Madison Scott-Clary:He looks at the clearing and at the trees around him.
Madison Scott-Clary:Looks in wonder.
Madison Scott-Clary:Looks in awe.
Madison Scott-Clary:Looks in terror and panic.
Madison Scott-Clary:Looks at the ground and the trees and the sky tries even to look at the
Madison Scott-Clary:Sun and learns that the sun's arrows are keenest above all to the eyes.
Madison Scott-Clary:It hurts.
Madison Scott-Clary:It hurts.
Madison Scott-Clary:Do not look directly at the Sun faithful.
Madison Scott-Clary:I laugh.
Madison Scott-Clary:Ying has decreed that the Sun provides your life, and so it
Madison Scott-Clary:is too dear for you to behold.
Madison Scott-Clary:He grinds his palms against his eyes and smears his fur with tears and with dirt.
Madison Scott-Clary:Even as he cries, he is marveling at the flashes and swirls of
Madison Scott-Clary:light that come to him now.
Madison Scott-Clary:And each phosphine that blooms pink and white and green in
Madison Scott-Clary:his eyes is a prayer to me.
Madison Scott-Clary:And so I allow him this moment of non darkness until the moment passes and he
Madison Scott-Clary:can open his eyes once more without pain.
Madison Scott-Clary:Where are you too?
Madison Scott-Clary:I am with you.
Madison Scott-Clary:Can I see you?
Madison Scott-Clary:We are also too dear for you to see with your eyes, ying and I, but do you not
Madison Scott-Clary:feel the way in which we pierce your heart and burn along your arms as you
Madison Scott-Clary:prepare the incense for our offering?
Madison Scott-Clary:LT is silent once more.
Madison Scott-Clary:Still once more.
Madison Scott-Clary:He prays.
Madison Scott-Clary:He Crais to ying with a fervor he has not yet shown in his 40 years.
Madison Scott-Clary:Tears stain tracks down his cheeks as he struggles with a sudden overwhelming.
Madison Scott-Clary:A sense he now possesses.
Madison Scott-Clary:Go and prepare for your day.
Madison Scott-Clary:Faithful.
Madison Scott-Clary:I am with you.
Khaki QOD:This was the first of two parts of unseeing by Madison, Scott Clary.
Khaki QOD:Read for you by the author herself.
Khaki QOD:Tune in next time to find out how Luton the village cope with their
Khaki QOD:reality being turned upside down.
Khaki QOD:As always you can find more stories on the web@thevoice.dog, or find the
Khaki QOD:show wherever you get your podcasts
Khaki QOD:Thank you for listening to the voice of dog.
