When Zita came up from the village, bearing an armload of flatbread and a small basket full of spice cakes for Lyut, he had ceased his conversation with Týw and had ceased meditating by laying on the ground, and had instead settled for sitting cross-legged in the entrance to his cave looking out. Zita sang as she walked, as she had for the last ten festival weeks, and so Lyut heard her before he saw her.
He debated for thirty heartbeats whether or not he was willing to keep his eyes open. He debated whether or not he was willing to see, to perceive someone with senses other than those he had been born with.
Lyut made up his mind and closed his eyes when he heard Zita rounding the curve of the path toward the clearing before his cave. He had seen her shadow move, he had seen her between the trunks, and all courage had failed him in that moment.
"Faithful, why do you close your eyes?"
Lyut stayed silent.
"As you wish, faithful. Some miracles are private and must be held close to the heart, but not all of them, and to hide this one would be to live a lie before me and before the village."
"I am not brave enough."
Zita's singing crescendoed as she entered the clearing, then abruptly stopped. Lyut supposed that because he was not sitting in the customary place with the customary smile on his face, that she must have sensed some change in him, and at this, he swallowed.
He turned over what Týw had said within his head. He turned it over ten times and considered the ramifications of it. Were he to keep his newfound sense a secret, then yes, he would in some way be living a lie, and yet there was terror to be had at the thought of anyone finding out. He was holy, was he not? He was pure before Ýng at all times, and he was pure in the ways that the village could not be, for that was his role as the ascetic, as the incense-maker, as blind Lyut.
And yet to lie was to sully himself. To lie before the village was to betray his role as ascetic and to make himself less holy in the eyes of Ýng.
To live a lie until Ýng took him and decided at what point in the endless cycle he should be placed upon his death was too terrible a thought, and the need to tell truth, to remain as pure as he could be, won over in his mind.
"Lyut?" Zita spoke.
He opened his eyes. He opened his seeing eyes and looked across the clearing and saw Zita there. Shorter than him, softer and rounder than him. Too, she was certainly better fed than him, though that was not his place. She was, he thought, unlike anything he had expected her to be.
He smiled. "Zita."
That he had opened his eyes and looked upon her seemed to startle Zita, and she took a half-pace back away from the cave.
"Zita, Ýng has blessed me this day. Ýng and his servant have blessed me, and when I woke and opened my eyes, I saw. I saw for the first time."
She frowned and walk toward him, stepping to the side halfway across the clearing to approach him from a diagonal. When his eyes tracked her movements, she rushed to him and set down the bread and cakes beside him. "Ýng has done this?" she said quickly and quietly. "Ýng has worked such a wonder!"
"Yes," Lyut said. It was a small lie, but one more easily fixed when next the topic came up. "Ýng has granted me sight. I have been praying and meditating, and I do not yet wholly know the reason why."
Zita's eyes darted this way and that as though to take in all of his face, to look at his eyes and to check for the scars that Lyut had sometimes felt while washing, though he knew not where they came from. Eventually, she looked into his eyes for a long moment.
This act made Lyut uncomfortable, and he did not rightly know why. Was there something to behold there? He could see her eyes, for they were round and dark, and seemed to be made of a ring of brown surrounding a circle of black, and as her eyes moved, he saw that the circle of black would sometimes get larger or smaller, though perhaps it was some trick of the light.
He could see her eyes, and yet he felt as though to look directly into the eyes of someone was to see truly see them, and he was worried that, on some level, Zita would be able to read his thoughts and fears, that she would know deeper secrets about him than he could possibly ever know about her. Was this some knowledge of the sighted that he would someday learn himself?
The feeling of being sullied and unholy hung around him like a cloud.
He asked, then, quietly: "What do you see, Zita?"
"I see you as I always see you, but I see you with your eyes open and clear, where they used to be cloudy and dull, and I see your fur brown and thick without the scars that my mother says have lined your eyes since you were born."
"Yes, but what do you *see*?"
Zita finally averted her eyes, though only, it seems, to pick up a cake from the basket and split it in two, holding out one half for Lyut and keeping the second for herself.
"I see that Ýng has wrought a miracle and that our time of fasting and keeping holy has led to something truly worth celebrating."
Lyut let his shoulders relax from a tenseness he had not known he was holding, and he accepted the spiced cake from her. "I see. Thank you, Zita. I have been praying and meditating on this all day, and though I know I must not, I doubted this miracle and felt unholy."
She bit into her cake and chewed, her eyes focusing seemingly on nothing, though Lyut could hardly read her expression so soon. "I think that you are as holy now as you were at the beginning of the time of fasting. You have kept holy as have those who came before you, and the village has kept holy, and perhaps the whole world has kept holy, and now Ýng has provided for us a new thing."
Lyut ate his spice cake and thought on this. He thought about what Týw had told him. He thought about the shock of sight, still so new to him that the brightness and colors in the world stung his eyes and brought him to tears. He thought of how overwhelmed he was by this mere fact, and he thought about how small he was before Týw and his lord.
He thought about how small he was and realized that his devotion burned more strongly within him than it had ever before, and, though he did not know or understand Týw's motives, he knew that any servant of Ýng's was master of him, for the most holy are the servants of servants.
He thought about this and then he smiled to Zita once more and nodded. "Yes. Yes, this is a new thing that Ýng and his servant Týw have done, and in them I will continue to be holy."
Zita tilted her head to one side, as though perhaps she had not heard well. "Who is Týw?"
"I am Týw, and I am the god of the water and of the moon and of watching and of death, and I am servant to Ýng, and I have given sight to Lyut."
When Zita understands, she falls to her knees and prostrates herself before Lyut, seeing no one else to bow before. "A spirit! A spirit!"
Lyut laughs at this, though not unkindly. "I believe Týw, that they are the god of the water and of watching, though I know not what the moon is. I have prayed to Ýng about this and Týw is Their servant."
"I am. I have given Lyut sight and Ýng is watching all of us."
"I cannot see you, though," Zita says.
"As the sun is too dear to look at, so are the gods, faithful."
"How can I be your faithful?" There is an edge of frustration to her voice, and her tail dances about behind her.
"Every time you bath or drink pure water, every time you keep watch on the world, every time you behold the beauty of the moon, and every time you mourn the dead, you give praise to me, for not all prayers are in words, as Lyut well knows."
He nods in agreement.
Zita sits up once more and considers this. "Why have you given Lyut sight?"
"That is not for you to know, faithful, not yet. There will be a time when you will, however."
Ever faithful, she relaxes at this, for she knows the workings of the gods almost as well as Lyut does.
"Now, it is almost evening," I say. "Put away the bread and the cakes lest the night animals take them."
Zita nods and moves to help Lyut gather his food before realizing that he can see the basket and the flat loaves of bread as well as she, then laughs.
After the food is put away, both fishers kneel together and begin to pray aloud to Ýng.
