The Raven Mocker's Legacy

Adanvdo’s eyes could not see past the figure posing before the bed. Graceful lines emerged from soft black hair flowing down to form a most pleasing cascade upon delicate shoulders and back.

Suddenly, the world around the figure slowed its pace so that motion was not of this world but of its own time. Adanvdo had experienced this anomaly in battle, when the heightened senses perceive every action in its most basic elements of motion and detail. But he had never experienced it with a simple encounter.

From a muffled, distant land, Udanhti’s voice drifted into Adanvdo’s ear, “May I present to you our most competent lady of medicine, Wadulisi, of the Ani Gilohi clan.”

“Wadulisi”, “honey”, that gift to man whose essence contains the sweetest of all tastes; whose texture is blended so perfectly that it could not present a more pleasing image; whose countenance is so special that it pours in its own time and flows with pride and dignity at its own pace; whose color is so unique and beautiful, no other object can compare.

Adanvdo watched as the super slow world around the woman’s exquisite figure enabled him to observe her hair slowly lift and then float as she turned to gaze up at the new priest. Each strand of her gleaming black hair moved in a syncopated dance around her face presenting all degrees of light, dark, shadow, contrast, subtlety, and shade celebrating black not as the dark and dreary representative of darkness and lack of color but as vibrant and exciting.

As the dancing curtain unveiled her face, her features were instantly recognizable as the model for perfection that every face on earth strived to copy but fell short, left as but an imperfect imitation of this most pristine standard.

This face was that which he had, without knowing, searched for subconsciously when his eyes sampled the myriad of faces he had encountered in his lifetime. It was that model for which the mind has been programmed to recognize. Every nose was but an inferior copy; every mouth a vulgar distortion; every forehead a substandard imitation; every set of eyes dull and drab by contrast; every other face left disappointingly wanting.

Had he never seen her, he might never have known that there existed a face whose proportions and lines and features fit the model of perfection preprogrammed in his mind. Hers was the mold from which all faces should be cast.

With soft, kind, uncomplaining eyes, she smiled politely and waited. Waited for what? Oh, yes, his introduction