Insight

“He has the Sight, peasant. Forty leagues I have travelled seeking his aura.” Fatigue and frustration spilled into his voice as he looked down at the woman kneeling before him.

She spoke. “He walks in his sleep, sahib. Says words his father and I cannot fathom, cries tears for I know not what. But he is just a boy. I hold him to my chest and his breath calms. And the next morning, he remembers nothing.”

“He must be made to remember. To disregard the visions is a betrayal of the Sight.” 

He glanced at the doorway where a brown face peeked out from behind a man’s knees. How did this low-born couple birth a Seer? They understood so little with their pigs and corn and mud hearth. 

But the pigs were fed and the corn ripe and the stead clean. He was not without feeling. 

Taking a breath, he continued. “He sees a world untold, woman. Far beyond the squalor of your life. He must be trained, his ability channelled. He will join the Seers and they will grow our land. Your son will give Shahran a future. Do you understand?”  

She understood. She understood that the man wore a red signet ring. She understood that she must kneel. She understood that her baby would live with his night’s terrors somewhere beyond her reckoning for the rest of his days. All this she understood.

And she wept.