I wanted to try something new this week, so I am starting a series of free writing in response to various pieces of art that impact me. They may actually form a complete narrative at times, or they may only be descriptions. By clicking on the art itself, you can see it on its original page and in its full size.
These short stories are written in a period of twenty minutes, and I must confess that I will do a bit of minor editing to keep from embarrassing myself.
Mattepainting – Dubai by ~dges on deviantART
Only Time Will Tell
I am finally here.
I saw this vision long ago, before these sorts of things were possible, before the car, before electricity, before many things. I saw this place.
I have had many visions, of course. The whole role of “Seer” would be rather bland without the sights to make the days go by, but most of the time my visions only predicted things that I would see actually come to pass within the next year or so. Occasionally, I had premonitions of events a dozen years away. But this…
This mystical place… this vision that has haunted me my whole life has drawn me closer everyday… step by step to this Mecca of technology. I hardly believed that I would ever see this place. When I first Saw, I was only a boy, and I figured I might be just having a flight of fantasy. Then the other visions came… Jonny falling down the well, Mother stricken with grief, Father staying in the fields until well after dark. There was nothing more that he could do out there, but in my Sight, I knew that he did it only to stay away from the sorrow of such a tragedy, a tragedy that he had been helpless to prevent.
I was too scared to tell anyone when the vision happened, but when Jonny actually fell…
It was all true. Every moment. Every tear that I envisioned on my mother’s face. Every second that Father would spend in the field hiding from anguish came to pass.
My village already had a seer, so I her out. I told that wrinkly old woman everything that I had seen, and she believed me. She told me who I was, what I was, and she told me that she had lived over seven hundred years. Her time was coming to a close, so the gods or God or Fate or whatever had chosen a new seer.
Despite all the other visions I’d seen, this city – this beacon of light calling through time – this was the one impression that I’d had over and over. Every other vision I’ve ever had was a one-time phenomenon. One glimpse of what will be. And that glimpse was never wrong. I couldn’t always understand what I was seeing, but the visions were always accurate to every detail.
So here I am, at the vista of my ultimate vision. The frightening part of being here is that I have not had any new visions in the past four years. After hundreds of years of daily visions and spending innumerable hours in transcription of what would be, I had time on my hands. Silent time slowly passing.
During my times of seeing, I could be caught up for hours at a time without knowing. I might begin in the early morning and become aware once more as the sun was setting. I didn’t know what to do with my days when nothing happened. And nothing happened. I sat and waited. I meditated. I tried to invoke the visions through strange rituals of religions from all around the world, but nothing came. Nothing.
Then I turned on the television. Having nothing left and giving up all hope, I flicked on the flat screen, and I saw it. Some sort of travel channel was running a special on exotic locales, and I saw my City. I knew it instantly, the way you know a best friend from years gone by. I knew it.
Am I here to lead this city? Am I here to die? Maybe it’s both. Maybe I will die for this place, on behalf of this place. I don’t know. I don’t have visions anymore. Only time will tell.