Eye for an Eye

Very short story on the meaning of true love.

A great many years ago there lived a girl no different from those today in but one thing; blindness. She was born in an ocean of darkness which she could never swim out of. Fortunately, a faint glow of light had entered her world and was named Hope. If she felt lonely and lost to the world there was the comforting hand on her shoulder. The calm voice that vibrated through her very soul. It was Hope the girl clung to with all her strength and will, making it her every reason to survive. A god of her own religion.

 

And she prayed, prayed to her god for the impossible to be possible. For however much her heart was filled with gratitude for this loyalty, there was still the vast emptiness surrounding her like invisible bars of a cage, casting her into the shadow which was named Despair. When tears would flow like summer rains and hate would fill her for being blind, those were the moments that lasted eons. Eons of Despair. It was the devil poisoning her heart with grief and misery, making it her every purpose to keep fighting. The satan of her own religion.

 

Growing weaker each day, losing the strength to keep fighting and believing, intensifying the desire of seeing the shoulder that held her close, to watch the man who spoke those soothing words and reach out to his face watching those eyes mirroring her own affectionate expression. To swim out of the darkness and grasp the sky with her fist. It was the desire that made her understand it was all for naught, a disillusion mesmerizing her dreams.

 

"My love, my stars, I want to know who is the bringer of light. For to be left ignorant is to be left with no further cause to live."

The deep voice that answered her, the voice of this god, always made her feel ashamed of what she just had said. "My sun and moon, if life is losing its grip on you, no words or image can express what I feel. Would you truly do anything to step out of the shadow?"

There was no doubt in the girl's voice as she immediately responded. "You know you need not ask."

A long silence followed before the man reacted again. "Then your prayers will be answered. Take these eyes, my sun and moon, my everlasting light."

 

Finally, the faint glow of light grew brighter and started to breach through the cage and lift her up out of the ocean. The curtains of a long dramatic play opened and she stepped forward. Her eyelids moved up and there were colours everywhere. But the focus was on the man before her, so average to any stranger, though for her it was so much more. She sensed there was something wrong. She didn't see those chocolate brown eyes he had spoken of, instead they were grey and stared unnaturally into the vast distance. There was no Hope in those eyes, not even a faint hint at all. Despair stalked the mist that ran across the iris. He just simply stood there, like a dead soul trapped in a living being.

Tears ran down her cheeks, like colourless blood draining her empty. The light made her understand that she had been blind. Blind in many more ways than she had thought.  Felt the shadow crumble to nothing but a faint glow, weakly burning like a candle in the long cold night. The symbol of her former being.

The man trembled, growing weaker by the second. He fell to his knees and saved his last breath to say: "You look just beautiful." A weak smile touched his lips just before the darkness fell over him, for all eternity.

There she was blinded by the light. And how she longed for the shadows, how she longed to dive back into that ocean and lock herself up in that cage. To watch the faint glow of light, to watch it still alive.

Author's Note

Any feedback would be welcome.

Reviews

[mayowa]

your story makes one see the abstract aspect of love. Tangible eyes would fail a thousand times if it try to look at love. Love is actually a thing of the mind and thus the soul.

[mayowa]

touching..., quiet touching.

[Raaf]

This would make a great outline for a longer story. It's a great tale of irony and one that would be fun to read. But you don't really have characters here, just a scene and some explanation. Also, as my friend likes to say "show-don't-tell". The sentence "A girl was deeply in love with a boy." misses a tremendous opportunity to convey all the romance, nostalgia and longing we feel when we're in love. You should replace that sentence with a couple paragraphs describing an action she is taking BECAUSE of her love. See if you can write it without even using words like "love", "affection", "longing". It's funny that actually tell me, the reader, that she loves him is so direct and simple and yet it's just about the worst way to get me to understand how she feels. In order to understand how she feels I have to remember all the many times I was in love (once, was it? :) ) and what I was willing to sacrifice for her.

A great start, Acropolix! This will make a great outline on a book jacket someday! :)

[Acropolix]

First of all, thank you for taking the time to review this story.
It first wrote this story as a simple, bed-time story with the main purpose to convey a moral to the reader, not as much as to focus on the love itself. Though you are right to say that the simplicity of the story makes it somewhat difficult to feel what the girl is feeling. I will have another look on the subect and see what I can do. Anyways, thanks for the feedback!

[Raaf]

You're welcome! In my opinion, bed time story or not, this should be longer. How do you lull a child to sleep with a story that takes only four minutes to read? :) I understand exactly what you're saying and I think you're really on the right track here. Your story has that haunted, archaic (?) feel to it. Like you picked up a dusty old tome of fairy tales, carefully opened it up and began reading a fairy tale that was written a century ago but whose moral still rings true to this day. I would advise investigating some of those old bedtime fairytales, and reading them in order to get an idea of the pacing they use. Regardless of how old a story is, if it's worth its salt then it will maintain some of the same story telling structure that I'm suggesting you employ here.

[Acropolix]

I have tried to edit the story, perhaps you might have another look on it. If that's not too much asked...

[Raaf]

Hey Acropolix, I don't have a ton of time right now but I read through part of it and have a couple quick comments: One, I like the tone and phrasing better. You seem to be really getting close to that "fairy tale" feel. But the grammar and punctuation need to be cleaned up. I think the first paragraph has a good "feel" to it, but has numerous gramatical errors and sentence fragments that are extremely distracting and really betray the work of art you're trying to produce here. For example, this sentence doesn't make sense and I'm not sure I even know what you're trying to say: "Hope was physically resembled by the comforting hand on her shoulder through hard times ahead."

I'm very interested in continuing to help you, but you should proof read and rewrite the story more still. I don't have time to help you out with specific grammatical fixes, hopefully someone around does. I really hope you comb through this and get it cleaned up enough to post a revision. Please reply here when you have that and I'll be happy to give you further help.

Best,
Raaf

[NoblePariah]

This is good. I like the overall cometary you give on the meaning and the state of love. I would say that it could be added to a longer story as something one character tells another to teach them something about love. (that's just my opinion, it's good as a stand alone story as well.) All in all a job well done.