average human’s Reviews > One Small Echo > Status Update

tearing his clothes to ribbons, opening up gaping wounds that cried fat, scarlet tears, leaving a slick red path back to the cave.
The monster that had latched onto his mind must have been unbearably violent.
You will pay, the disembodied voice echoed through her head a second before the world was plunged back into darkness. You will see. The echo tapered into a faint ringing of laughter. Oh, you will see what you have done, wild one.
She stumbled, her arms swinging out. “W-What⁠—”
She was outside the cave, but the darkness had descended once again.
“Eiko?”
That was Kaito’s voice calling in the distance.
She staggered towards it, her heartbeat hammering in fear, her breath a rasp of terror.
“Kaito!” She screamed his name, tripping and stumbling across the sand, her arms flailing.
“Someone said they saw you creeping down h—” He was suddenly there, holding her, his hands gripping her face. “Your eyes,” he croaked. “Eiko … what happened to your eyes?”
“Everything is black,” she wailed, fear rolling over her like one of the big waves she could hear crashing up against the rock staircase.
She could hear it, but she couldn’t see it.
Because the monster had rendered her blind.
Suddenly, all she could think about was that song she loved so much. The song that made her shiver. The sensation of fear she enjoyed, because, of course, those things would never happen to her.
The Quiet would never get to her.
Not her.
Quieten your cries, close your eyes,
What you fear is already here.

8%

“Hey!” a male voice called before heavy footsteps pounded against the road ahead. “Was hoping I’d catch you two.”
“Speak of the devil,” Rion teased as Ky fell into step on Eiko’s other side, picking up her smaller arm and looping it through his larger one, taking her cane in his spare hand.
He smelled of aromatic tea and buttery bread, and his tunic was thick and soft, better quality than she could ever hope to wear.
“What do you mean?” Ky demanded.
“She’s planning to rain potatoes down on this whole region because of your father,” Eiko told him.
“Potatoes won’t do the trick,” the young lord tittered sternly. “You know what they say. Our heads are hard as rock. We have built-in helmets.”
“Our heads and our hearts,” Eiko agreed. “So you’ll join us?”
“For the potato murders?” he asked. “Absolutely. Count me in. Speaking of murder, will you be my date to dinner tonight?”
“I don’t think I’m your type,” Eiko joked, while her heart thudded inside her chest. Ky was the second-youngest of Lord Erendi’s sons, landing somewhere in the middle of his large brood. The Lord and Lady of Stonesigh would be hosting the royal family for dinner.
Prince Chasin might be there.
Would he have scars?
Would he recognise—no, how could he? It had been pitch-black in the cave, and he had been unconscious when she dragged him out. Besides, that was ten years ago now.
“I thought you were going to skip it to hang out with that guy you were seeing?” Rion’s concerned question burst through Eiko’s spiralling thoughts.
“Yeah, well …” Ky trailed off. “So, what do you say, little Eiko? Be my date? Make me the thirtieth happiest man in⁠—”
“Ky Erendi,” Rion interrupted, an eek of sharpness seeping into her tone. “What happened?”
“He said he’d disown me.” Ky’s body stiffened, though he didn’t break stride. “If I didn’t bring a girl to dinner and stop embarrassing him with my disgusting … behaviour.”
Eiko tripped over nothing, but her two best friends were there to catch her without so much as a pause in their steps. They walked on quietly, digesting Ky’s words. She wanted to curse and shout and offer to throw horse dung in his father’s face, but it was nothing Ky hadn’t heard before, and her rage felt useless.
“So the best you could come up with was a dirt-poor blind girl?” she asked dryly, hoping to distract him.
There was a smile in his voice when he answered. “Even blind, you’re still the most beautiful.”
“It’s true,” Rion quickly agreed before Eiko could accuse Ky of lying.
“You’re lying,” Eiko said anyway.
“We aren’t,” Rion insisted. They had taken to trying to drill into her that she was stunning and beautiful and perfect in every possible conceivable way after she drunkenly admitted that she was devastated not to know what she looked like anymore.
“Even when you’re dressed in your brother’s old clothes, I’m like a sack of potatoes next to you,” Rion exaggerated.
“Okay, that’s the fifth time you’ve mentioned potatoes today.” Eiko tried to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Did you skip breakfast?”
It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate their efforts; she just didn’t believe them. She wasn’t even sure it mattered. She knew there was a painting of her parents hanging in the kitchen, and she remembered the cloud of her mother’s dark hair, the slim line of her nose, the bow of her lips, the soft shadow of her eyes.
Was that what she looked like?
It would be nice to look like her mother. And her grandmother.
That would be nice, but did it matter?
Kaito said her eyes had turned a milky white that day, after her encounter with the Quiet.
She remembered waiting for her sight to come back.
She waited and waited, far longer than Kaito, or Rion, or Ky. But it never happened. Her sight never returned, and the pale opal colour that had taken over the dark of her eyes never faded. In that sense, at least, she would never look like her mother or grandmother.
“Speaking of breakfast—” Ky squeezed her arm. “—how about dinner?”
“Are you sure I won’t get you into even more trouble?”
“How could you possibly do that?” he asked as she tripped over nothing.
Again.