To tell you of me seems a trivial endeavor; nonetheless, I shall humor your inquiry.

I was born to a great man and a mild woman. They were of the type that is rarely seen in this day. Their love was undisputed. This fact alone was not enough to keep them from their fate, however. To die together in a beautiful, miasmic, terrifying inferno was to be their release from their worldly flesh. Hate is born just as love from the most coveted places of the heart. The monster that was given rise from such hate burned with a wonderful heat, lashing out at all whom it found guilty of pursuing my parent’s model of love.

I was left, just as all the others, to perish from loneliness and hunger. My flesh had been scarred; I was a shell of what I had been.

I was 10.

While not a particularly outgoing child, I was at the very least acceptable. The people surrounding my family and I were of the sort to laugh and hide than be truly awakened by conversation. I found them dull; my parents thought them gay.

A long while past in their care after the departure of my quiet mother and fearsome father. I had no reason to thank them. These people I had thought dull were performing the tasks my parents had left to them. They fed my body. They washed my eyes.

Here I should say these dull people did augment their position with me by searching all options to help my weeping eyes. Nothing they, their physicians, the physician’s clerics, or the cleric’s gods could do ceased the red tears that seeped down my disfigured face. They sought to wash away the painful welts the crossed over my pale visage. They sought to bring back the deep beauty I once had.

For I had been beautiful. My cream body was supple and light. My face was an oval with rose accents. My eyes… they had been of the most elegant grey. I had what many deemed a raw exquisiteness bestowed to me from the gods.

I say they were ridiculous.

When those who cleaned me, fed me, and poured affection of the most superficial sort over me could not heal my eyes, they, too, wept. They had healed my body. They had, indeed, brought back to my life the raw glow of perfect charm that I can only now vaguely recall. Save for all of these things, they had done nothing for me.

I was blind.

It is a strange thing, to be blind when one has seen for so many years. For me there was no more colour. I could no longer watch as someone laughed. I was unable to tell the difference between sarcasm and truth. My life as I knew it was reduced to little more than touch and sound, as far as they can be counted.

Self pity is an odd creature. It wraps one up in its comforting embrace, soft and safe. Then it begins to tighten, to play with its prey.  I was caught in its enveloping cycle; over and over I saw what I could have been. I saw what I was.

I was recluse from all.

My age was 14 when I was woken from my stony state. My days had been spent, squandered; being fed, bathed, pampered and put back to sleep. This was repeated until I could tell the very instance I would be woken, the moment I would be fed, and by its sound the clothing I was to wear.

I was not, however sensitive I may seem, aware of much else. To talk was difficult. To form thought took great energy. For all intents and purposes, I was mute, albeit from a much less disastrous choice of heart.

Time had begun to march inexorably to a crossroad. If I were to go forth and walk my solemn path, I would be lost to my own demon darkness.  If I was to choose a different road, one not yet clear to me, I would be treading alone, forsaking the pity that had sustained me, to enter the world of the living and take my place among them.

My corridor to life was not so bright as it would soon become. But I must halt my history for a moment to tell briefly of a peculiar family trait.

Family was not a synonym for blood. Blood tied me to my parents, not the social kinship given to us by default. By my blood I was given much, excluding everything you know about inheritance. It was said, though by whom and with what credibility I am a loss for, that those who share my blood have talents of unnatural means. Of what they speak I cannot be certain; perhaps the queer way my kin act or perchance their ability to see moments in time that have not yet come to pass. No matter their skills or tricks, I am tied to them as I am tied to no other soul.

At 14, as I have said, I was awoken. The trivialities I had been so fraught over were beginning to fade. I saw light. For my soul, this single pinpoint in the growing dark was startling. I could see many things from this tiny opal.

Much as I do now.

Forgive me. I am hurrying over a myriad of points I must tell you in order for you to fully realize the weight of what you have asked of me.

To say that I was a recluse would be just touching on my depth of recession. I became, to many, a dead thing. While they had healed my body, or insofar as they could, they had neglected my soul. The breath that had lifted me to innumerable heights as a child was failing in me. My eyes may have been dulled and wept glistening ruby drops, but they could hold nothing to the raping that had taken place in my bruised shell.

How long I was in this trance of a state is difficult to say, in any case it is hard to tell from my perspective. You see, I fell into a well, a place of utmost peace. My darkened heart no longer feared death; indeed, it no longer feared anything at all. The loneliness that had gripped so tightly in the beginning was now oversaturated with a velvety black I slowly succumbed to.

Do not think that I never mourned for my lost blood. For months, no physician or cleric could stem the grief and sorrow that raged from my small body. I was awash in it, and my unwillingness to free myself of them drove me to the seclusion you saw before.

Some say I have not yet wept enough.

Others say I have no more tears to cry.

They are all correct.

Neither is correct.

And yet that diminutive pearl of light began to draw me out. It initiated change of a sort. I no longer needed to see in the formal significance of the word. My miniature world grew; from just out of touch to beyond the clouds. Flashes of what I could only imagine, at that time, to be fond memories pulsed from the light. They forced me to remember. I saw laughter. I saw tears: clear, salty, exquisite tears sheeting my mother’s face in pure joy. I felt my father’s deep rumble as he read to us. I tasted home.

And then they stopped.

I was alone. More utterly and wholly forsaken than I had yet imagined. For an insignificant amount of time the soft embrace of the dark had loosed, and I was free; now they were gone as well. My soul, my courage, my spirit was finally trampled to ashes. There was nothing of me that remained, nothing of the beautiful, graceful child, nor of the charming, confidant woman I was sure to become.

I have known what it is to be nothing.

I know that something will come from nothing if it is willed with enough conviction.

My senses had abandoned me. Touch, smell, taste, even my ears became uninterested in the world. However, there was a shift, a gentle nudge from an unknown power, if you will, that stirred the dust that had been my tattered soul. It was a slow, interminable march that originated in my heart of hearts. I was held in a state of limbo, between knowing where I was going and not realizing I was moving at all. Too soon, it seemed, I felt a movement, a steady charge to a place I had never sought nor cared to be; a place where the dark silk was drawn away from my eyes and I was forced to stare at my soul. Then it materialized from a prod to a pounding detonation.

I began to burn, to feel a chill of the coldest zephyr and the flames of the most scorching hell as they licked at me from all around. It filled me to my brim, and exploded in an excruciating, piercing, divine white light, battering me and holding me and cradling me until it resided into my darkest of hearts. There it burned, scorched away the remnants of pain, loss, defeat, guilt, suffering, replacing it with…nothing.

The light swept my soul free. It was mine to do with what I chose. I had every and all senses once more.

It is pertinent for you to know that I had never, save for this moment, felt such a presence. I was taken aback by it much as you would be if you were to encounter such a force.

Once more I could breathe without ache. I felt the texture of everything I could reach. I licked the mixing spoons the old cooks would give me after they made cakes. I heard every sound, from the storms that would roll forth from the mountains to the frantic beating of the miniscule birds who fed on the sweet nectar of honeysuckle. My eyes, my grey, pale eyes, still saw nothing.

But my mind did.

You must also know that until the fire, I was an exceptional equestrian, skilled in the highest of schools.

I was riding when it first happened. They were going for a ride. They thought to take me, recalling their promises to my parents. Fearful of my death, I was placed with a rider on either side. There was a lulling calm around me. I fell asleep.

As I slept, I saw a wood. I saw horses and riders trekking through, laughing gaily and chatting about nothing. They were dull people but they had a beauty about them. One was twisting about, desperate to escape a flitting bee. In my dream, I spoke, “You only anger it. Leave it be, and it will cause you no harm.”

They were panicked.

It was not a fanciful reverie. I had not spoken in my dream; I had spoken aloud. Not realizing, I merely continued. Looking to the sky, I saw bruised clouds, of the dangerous weather kind. I mentioned in passing that they should try for home.

They cried.

It was a miracle some said. It was the great medicine of the physicians. It was a cleric’s divine insights. They believed I had sight. How could I tell them it was a dream, that any moment I would awake and blindness would take me again?

It was on that occasion I understood what blood had given me. I could see, in a manner, without eyes. I knew my world as if in a dream. My sight came from that place between awake and asleep. It came from that light. It came from my blood.

Now you see what it is you have asked. I tell you not only of me, but of generations who are lost; generations whose voices are forever silent, forever still in their wondrous slumber. To tell you of me seems a trivial thing; to tell you of my blood is far from inconsequential.

I am now 29. I have had a generation to come to know my soul. It will take many more generations to comprehend the enormity of my sight. You can see I still weep at times. These tears are of a deep red, and they will follow me until my death. There are questions, of course, but these are reserved for priests and clerics, the divine and the wicked, those whose souls are as blank as mine, whose life is just beginning.

I hope to have satisfied your inquisitory nature. Much more you have asked, but for now, I take my leave, and bid you goodnight.