Eye for an Eye

They say this world is divine, full of spirits and mystical powers, but in all my time upon this hellish earth I haven’t seen a lick to prove it. All I know is real is what I feel and what I see. And right now, all I feel is my newly extinguished right eye, and all I see is the dusty wood of my mother’s front door.

It takes me a while to open it. I can walk right in -- the door doesn’t lock, and I live here -- but I don’t. I’m not able to, somehow. But it’s silent inside, and I get the impression that maybe I can sneak in without my mother noticing, so that’s what I do. Or try to.

She’s sitting at the table, staring at our single kerosene lamp. “You’re bleeding, aren’t you, Zephá?” Her nickname for me. She hasn’t seen me, but she knows anyway. She knows everything.

“Ah. Perhaps.”
“You didn’t get into a fight, did you?” 

I don’t respond. She knows as well as I that the only reason you bleed here is if someone beats you half to death. As she turns to face me, finally, I pull my hands -- and what they’re holding -- behind my back. She doesn’t need to know about these.

“Your eye!” She rushes up to caress my face, and I gasp with pain at her touch. No point in hiding this. “I can’t believe...”
My mother’s people believe that the eyes are the home of the soul, and to lose one is to lose half of yourself, half of your honor. I was hoping she had disposed of this inconvenient superstition, but my mother has always been religious for us both. 

I grit my teeth. “I can still see.” 

“It has already clouded over! Don’t lie to me, Zephá, not now.” She’s looking up at my face, almost teary-eyed.

All of a sudden, her gaze drops, and she gasps. Damn, she didn’t need to know about these.

“Are-- are those-- spiritore?”

 I sigh and reveal them. Two crystalline knives, glittering with my own blood. They are warm in my hands, and seem to thrum with otherworldly force. A believer would say it’s the spiritore, the magic metal of the gods, but I’d say it was just plain adrenaline. 

“Wherever did you get these?” 

“The guy who attacked me. They’re his. I nicked them as I ran off.”

She is shaking. “Zephá, I love you… spiritore… it’s cursed…”

Sadly, I understand her far too well. “No. I will leave.” I stand up to go. I can’t let myself turn around to see her if I’m leaving. But, as I’m walking out the door, I call back. “I will find him, the man who did this to me! I will find him, and take his eye, and bring honor to our name again!” And I will do it the way I survived this fight, and my life -- the way of stalking and shadows. The way of the rogue.