They called him PAWKSY. Pawksy, who’d drank from the Black Lake, whose snarl meant death, who’d once wandered the Ancient Forest and who had met the seers; Pawksy, the Eye Collector.
Just what he resembled now eluded him. He possessed vague recollections of his former self, but none so vivid as the appearance attributed to him now. Though he tried to hide himself away within his heavy, hooded cloak, he heard it, all around him, in whispers and, from the most bold, sometimes jeers. He was stooping now, perched upon a limp, his flesh scaly, hairless, and black, his teeth a milky white and his fingers clawed. He had four toes on one foot and three on the other, though whether this was due to an abnormal growth or an unpleasant severance, he’d either forgotten or never known. Only his eyes were never described for him, as they lay hidden away behind the thin sheet of cloth, the barrier that emitted the perpetual stench that crinkled his own fragment of a nose. And yet he moved well, silkily and silently. An eon of practice had bled into his behavior, and now, he was heard only when he wanted to be heard, or when the pratatattatta of the sack slung over his shoulder proved unpredictable. The soft rattling was often sufficient to scatter the other creatures of his world, if he was careless, and naturally, this hampered his objective quite a bit, more often than not. But the sack was too imperative to ever leave behind, and the items within were too vital for even a lone one to be discarded. They were his sight, after all. On most mornings, he moved about in a pattern. Brief intervals, punctuated only by a fragment of rest and the occasional meal, usually flailing fish by the streams that his ears would lead him too. He made it a point to expand his map at least once a day, though some days proved more difficult than others. This such day was one of them; he’d wandered, it seemed, into some barren area, with ground unfamiliar to his feet and sounds largely unknown to his ears. And as on other days where his wanderings took him astray, he found himself with a most difficult decision to make. It had been years and years since he’d walked with his herd, but more so than anything else, he thought he remembered their pace well. It seemed, Pawksy was sure, that he was always but a day behind them; that with a single, strong surge, he might encounter them once more. He’d caught only glimpses of them from within his collection, but alas, there was no chronology to these visions, and thus they brought him awareness only to his environment. But Pawksy knew—knew it in his heart, if one still sat within him—that the more unknown ground he covered, the closer he was to reuniting with his pack. And yet, the time it took to hunt in an unseen place was often better expended in his usual searching… But the lure of that great single stride was too strong. Feeling feverish, Pawksy sank to a lone, sharp knee, gently placing his sack of treasures in front of him as he did so. The circular organs inside hissed as he untied the top, stale and hardened from time, now resembling glass in both their sound and, soon, their touch. Slowly, he lowered his slender claws into the sack, and the moment that they grazed the first member of his collection, an eruption of color flooded his mind’s eye. It was a meadow, and it was daytime. Flowers of all sorts were blooming; large red ones with patterns of gold embroidered on their petals, fanciful yellow ones with thick, violet leaves on their sturdy stems. It was all as real to him as if he’d removed the bandage from his empty eyes and found himself within the blooming assortment. But the image was not real, or at least, not current. That was the nature of his curse, after all; the penance for his theft. What he was seeing had only once been seen by the eyes themselves; they were evocative moments, the events most important to the creature that had beheld them, so poignant for the observers that they lingered within the precious orbs long after detachment. How long ago those flowers had bloomed, Pawksy did not know; they might have been long dead. The clear and bright sky gave him no semblance of time as it was now, and though the image was not still, though the setting as he saw it moved, time elapsing, it gave him no real direction or indication of passage. If his cursed fingers tarried too long, the scene only repeated, recycling the sights of whatever that particular prey had mapped for him. And so, Pawksy removed his scaly flesh from the conduit, and instead perused his collection absently, a single sharp tip of his claw brushing against only a sliver of an eye each time, though this nearly imperceptible contact was sufficient to bring him more visions. They passed in and out of his mind in flashes, a continuous, incongruent stream of impossible transitions; he saw a slimy cavern with symbols written on the walls, an eerie purple sky with golden clouds and a greenish tint, the bowels of some aquatic abyss. He saw creatures too, the companions of those whose eyes he’d commandeered; he saw frolicking, four-legged beasts, scampering away, and slithering silver serpents, their eyes malevolent red diamonds. He saw all manner of things, nonsensical things, things that usually were never seen together, distant though they were in this world, and possibly some others, as far as Pawksy had went. To any other being the sights would be maddening, void of context as they were, but Pawksy had studied them; had spent many a night (or day—it made no difference to him) organizing them best he could, creating an elaborate contour for which he could plot his progress. And this progress sustained him more than any succulent flesh or luscious fruit ever could. So acute had his other senses grown, since that fateful day, that it seemed to him sometimes he was even closer to his herd than a day away. He could hear the shuffling of their steps, smell the stench of their waste. No matter what he traversed, where he took his next prey, these things were forever present. Yes, it mattered not that the sights that he absorbed might have been anywhere from a moment to a century ago. Those images were an outline only; the fleeting glimpses of his herd within them served only to remind him of their appearance. It was the scent—the scent and the sound—that let him know just how close he was. He was but a day away, he knew. Maybe even less. With this in mind, he ceased in his toiling, closing the sack and returning his mind to blackness. His collection had been of little use this time; he had wandered, it seemed, too far out of his prepared route. But this excited him, to some extent. As was so often the case, he might lose a day in hunting, but in doing so, he would gain another section for his map. That would aid him in the long run, he knew; was much more important. He could wait another day. And so he slung his sack over his shoulder, waited for the soft pratatattata to subside, and then began in his stalking. He forced the indicators of his herd from his mind, focusing instead only on the aberrations in his perception; if the area was unfamiliar, he would expect his prey to be as well. So Pawksy began in his stalking. He trudged through moist ground, his cloak snaring on items that he could not and probably would not ever know. Occasionally, he would bump into some amorphous obtrusion, and a resounding snap! or wihk! would punctuate the air around him, hindering his task, but he had grown used to these difficulties, and remained undeterred. Pawksy was always adapting; he never made the same noise twice when hunting. It took him some time to learn how to navigate this uncharted area, but eventually, his creeping proved sufficient to bring him his first signal of prey. Merely from the obstructions he’d encountered, Pawksy imagined himself in some sort of marsh; a mass of lush verdure tickling his scaly skin, the air around him thick and wet. He’d heard splashing, splashing that was most definitely not his own, and he’d crouched accordingly, not quite sure what was concealing him, but believing it to be dense underbrush of some unknown hue. The splashing was frenetic; merry. His prey was young, he presumed, and certainly not aware that dangers such as Pawksy lurked about in its home. This idea brought him tremendous yearning; these eyes were young, and fresh. Whatever they had seen would have to be recent, occurring within the last few years perhaps. What fortune he’d stumbled upon today! The joyous, playful noises seemed to intensify at this very thought, and unable to restrain himself another moment, Pawksy leapt from behind his barrier, the soft pratatattata now accompanied by a vicious shriek, the predatory cry native to his kind. He bounded towards the noise, which had stopped at once, as though frozen in fear, but Pawksy’s hearing was too sophisticated to be fooled, he’d identified his quarry’s location to within an inch, and even still, he could hear their furious, beating heart. The moment that he heard his own splashing, he pounced; his kill gave a meager whimper as he landed atop it, masked by his own ravenous screeching. He felt his claws dig into something warm and hairy, and it was small indeed, as he’d anticipated. He could not see where he’d wounded it, but he knew that both of his claws had penetrated the thick fat of a torso. Warm blood oozed over his claws as his prey squirmed, lashing about underneath his imposing body, its howls now becoming increasingly more akin to a croon; it might have been calling for its mother. Pawksy paid these sounds no mind; there was nothing else in the area, he was sure of it. He’d already incapacitated the creature with his raw brutality; what he needed now was speed and precision. As he’d learned long ago, he only had so much time to procure the eyes before they were rendered useless for his connection. His prey had to still be alive when he tore them away. And so he removed his claws briefly, providing the squirming beast the briefest of respites, before tracing his fingers along the bubbling body until he found that subtle change in texture that designated a face. The wailing ceased at this moment; either the creature was trying to feign death, or it knew what was to come next, and was transfixed in horror at it. Pawksy would never find out. He located the eyelids with the tips of his sharpened fingers, then meticulously peeled through the fleshy barriers to claim his prize. At this, the noises of agony returned, louder than ever before, but he ignored them as he gently pulled at the spheres of his desire, finally removing them both simultaneously, with the eeriest of splops! He held them tenderly in his hands, now removing himself from the writhing figure below him, waiting patiently for the images to explode within his head. Any moment now… Soon… It happened in an instant; the vision was blurred, an indication that his most recent victim had had poor eyesight of its own. But there was enough—there was color, at least, a deep, rich green, and a lot of it. He was small, and low to the ground, and murky water was splashing up into his field of vision in a hectic manner. And then, it stopped, abruptly, and the gaze shifted forward, fixed on a brambly patch of brown not too far off in the distance- Pawksy realized what was going to happen a moment before it did, though the revelation was not enough to have him drop the eyes. He watched as a shadowy figure burst from the shrubbery, and then he was gazing upward, forced onto his back, the teal sky hanging impartially over him, but only for a moment, for at the next instant it had been eclipsed by a face, the most horrendous face he’d even seen. It was sallow and stretched, bits of hardened tissue hanging here and there, a particularly disgusting mass of it stretched across the chin. He saw his own ivory teeth bared down at him as his view shifted ever so slightly to the left in the struggle, and he saw the exact manner in which his nose had been maimed, and that the thin sheet of cloth meant to conceal his eyes was not nearly as effective as he could have hoped, for he could see, somehow, the hollowness behind it. There were flecks of light pink then, as his innards splattered his face, and then, he was back to his oblivious scampering through the marsh. The moment had ended and started again. He watched it two more times before he dropped the eyes into the shallow water, where they shared a plop, and then he stood to be on his way. He would find something else to eat for the day.
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