Vision

or A Thousand Years in Paradise

Vishtani knelt in the chapel awaiting his vision. Most people never had visions and even among the most fortunate visions were rare. But not for Vishtani, he had a vision every time he spent more than a few hours in a chapel, which was why, even after three years of service to the Great God Ganshirajesh at his most holy temple, this was the first night vigil he had ever performed.

Before he had always managed to trade favors and chores with the other acolytes, so he was not in the chapel for very long and never alone. He felt no guilt at this although his visions were what energized the little hamlet he was from to send their tiny shrine’s only orphan to the Great God’s biggest temple.

They had done this without Vishtani ever telling a soul what the visions were about. His visions were too embarrassing, too shocking, too distressing to share. Even the shrine’s gentle priest, the only father Vishtani could remember, could not make his speak of the horrible, wonderful visions.

The cold marble beneath Vishtani’s knees faded, replaced by warm grass beneath his legs and back. The sun was low in the sky, filling the world with oranges, pinks, and yellows. And the man came up the hill towards him—the familiar man, who had even seemed familiar in Vishtani’s first vision more than a dozen years ago.

Orange sunlight shone off the man’s golden tresses and made his tan skin seem darker than Vishtani knew it was. Although how he knew was a mystery. His visions started at sunset and ended before dawn, no matter what time in his day they took him.

“I missed you,” the man said, standing at Vishtani’s feet. “You missed me, too.”

“No.”

“Then why are you waiting for me here?”

“Rather than in your bed?” Vishtani asked, rising to his feet before the man could either lift him up or lay beside him. The visions started the same way, but changed depending on what Vishtani said and did.

If he let the man help him up, then they walked side by side up the hill to the building on the top, which had a warm marble floor covered in throws and pillows, curtains that swayed in the gentle breeze for walls, and a few arches for a roof. It never rained here, but somehow the thick morning dew never settled within the building. Something Vishtani also didn’t understand how he knew.

If Vishtani refused to get up from the grass, the man lifted him like he was a child, even though they were practically the same size, and carried him in into the building. If Vishtani ran away, the man would chase him to the other side of the hill and catch him by the pebbly stream. And if Vishtani fought him off, the man would fall upon him in the grass.

But no matter what he did, no matter what he said, the man would always take him, urgently or tenderly, with laughs or in total seriousness. It wasn’t rape. Vishtani knew this man was his lover, and the man—the name was always elusively at the tip of his tongue—made him want it. So, it was just a matter of whether the first time that evening was on silk, the grass, or pebbles. Or any of the other places the two might end up.

The night always ended the same, Vishtani filled with exhaustion, falling to sleep against his lover’s chest, before he woke cold and stiff on the shrine’s dirt floor.

“Don’t ignore me,” said the man, as Vishtani walked in front of him up the hill. Vishtani had been only sixteen the last time he was here, when he had, night after night, been forced to stay in the shrine as the hamlet gathered the money to send him to the temple. Those nightly visits from a stranger who knew his body so well, whose body he knew so well, were terror to his younger self, but now he looked around with new sight.

Perhaps because he had not been here in three years. Or because in those three years he had gone from being a child whose entire world was the small valley where he was raised to a young man who had seen the view from a mountain, who had swum in the ocean and crossed a desert—a young man who realized just how much of the world he had yet to see.

Or perhaps simply because he was now, in his real life, the same size as he always had been in this vision—these visions, like looking out of his own eyes for the first time.

The hill he was on was not the only hill, and all the others had buildings on the top, some solid stone, other light and fragile, but most, wall-less and roofless like one before him.

Vishtani also looked at himself, at him arms. Sure enough he had remembered correctly. The scars and blemishes on his arms matched those that he had in life. Except…

The man came up behind him and lifted him from his feet, running up to the buildings marble steps before he set Vishtani down and pulled off the belt that kept all the carefully arranged folds of Vishtani’s garment in place. One more gentle tug and the cloth fell at their feet.

“Impatient,” Vishtani said, sitting on the top step, now bare as the day he was born.

“I missed you,” the man said, unrepentant.

“Here I am.”

The man took that as the invitation it was, but while he was busy trying to fill Vishtani with delights, Vishtani was looking again at his arms. Right below his left elbow he had a small straight scar that he was sure he did not have in life. This vision, surely, could not come true until the scar appeared.

“Am I boring you?” the man asked, pushing Vishtani gently onto his back. “If I am, I know some other games to play.”

“You only know one game.”

The man laughed. “This is the only game you like.”

“Try me.”

“Tomorrow,” said the man, his voice soft and his fingers gentle enough to make Vishtani almost forget that in his visions tomorrow never came.

But his protest died on his lips as the man sought those parts of his body that brought him the most pleasure, awakening his long dormant desire with gentle finger strokes behind his knee, warm hands on his sides, heated breath against his back.

Like every time before, he lost his sense of self. He was no longer a boy, man, or acolyte—he was simply his lover’s lover.

***

Vishtani awoke to a pink dawn. A dawn he had never seen in any vision he had ever had before. His lover was still there, holding him close, protecting him against the cool morning air. The man’s eyes were closed, but he was awake, for he never truly slept. Vishtani turned in his arms, unleashing the affection he hid the day before.

“Wake,” he said, “and show me your new game.”

But just as the man’s eyes opened, Vishtani’s words died on his lips. Someone was shaking his shoulder. The shoulder of his far away body. He grasped for his lover, but his body refused to move as he lay in his lover’s warm arms and knelt on the chapel’s cold floor. In the background he heard shouts of fear and anger, while his eyes saw the rosy dawn and his lover’s concerned face.

“I will miss you,” the man said, running his warm, gentle fingers against Vishtani’s frozen face. “I can wait no longer.”

And the vision faded. The cold stone solidified beneath his aching legs and the smell of people, much less pleasant than his lover’s scent, assaulted his nose.

He still could not move. He could not even open his eyes. He heard the Head Priest barking commands between scolding the acolytes who had tried to wake Vishtani.

That’s what it was, these aches and pains. Vishtani had been forcibly wakened from a vision only once before by a village boy who come to play and that time it had taken him nearly a month to recover. Or a month before the old priest made him sleep again in the shrine.

Vishtani could do nothing, not even swallow the building saliva in his mouth as he was lifted onto a bed and carried off. The drool trickled down his cheek and he heard a whimper. One of the other boys, perhaps.

Surely this would get him out of the nightly vigils that the Head Priest had thought were suitable punishment for Vishtani’s recent blasphemy. Recent in that the old man hadn’t heard of all the other times.

Powerful beings shouldn’t be given their own way all the time. Make them work for it.

At least that’s what the shrine priest had always believed, always said with a twinkle in his eye. And Ganshirajesh had never punished him.

That was all Vishtani said, but the Head Priest felt he needed greater reverence. But why be reverent to a bunch of powerful being that were far from perfect? Hadn’t anyone here even listened to the stories? Murder, seduction, betrayal…

What was so great about the folks of the Summer Hills? Or the gods of the Heights of Eternal Midsummer, as the children of the Great God were referred to here.

They weren’t all powerful, all knowing, or everywhere like Ganshirajesh was supposed to be. Most of them never went further from their home than their father’s mountain; they sent avatars everywhere else.

Some avatars lived at this temple and many more visited. Avatars were odd folk, living two lives: one when they were possessed by a god and another when their lives were their own.

New acolytes had trouble with this, but Vishtani hadn’t. Even through an avatar the god’s power was readily apparent, as was their arrogance and pride. If a person couldn’t tell by the swagger that a god was in possession, then he was blind.

The bed bumped to the floor and Vishtani’s immobile body bounced against the stiff mattress. At least his heart and lungs were still working. And his eyes were closed. Last time his eyes had dried out painfully before the shine priest had thought to close them.

The infirmary priest felt Vishtani over as he talked to the Head Priest. If there were others in the room, they didn’t speak. The infirmary priest was even angrier than the Head Priest about Vishtani’s condition. “He’s not going back in the chapel until he’s good and well.”

“The Great God commanded it. The boy had been too long away from the chapel. Ganshirajesh knew this would happen as he knows everything. This is his will.”

“My will is this boy stays here—in the infirmary—until he’s on his feet again.” A cloth wiped Vishtani’s cheek. “At least until he stops drooling.”

Don’t be so irreverent, Vishtani wanted to say, or the Head Priest will punish you.

But instead he fell asleep.

***

Recovery was quicker this time. Vishtani was sitting up by the next morning and on his feet in less than a week. The Head Priest visited him several times, but Vishtani kept his vision to himself. As much as he could anyway; the infirmary priest looked at him oddly the second morning. “Giving the gods what they want is easier.”

“But is it better?” Vishtani asked between bites of porridge. “They are children—powerful children, sure—but children none the less. Children should not forever be given their way.”

The priest laughed. “Your life will be hard if you act on your beliefs. For your own sake, just give in.”

“Never,” Vishtani said. “Hard does not mean bad and easy does not mean happy.”

The priest admitted that was true, but left shaking his head.

***

Vishtani kept himself busy over the next few weeks. No task was too tedious, no load to heavy, no job too time consuming for him. When he fell into an exhausted sleep at the end of the day, he didn’t dream. That was all he could hope for.

But whether he was chopping wood, digging holes, or beating iron into knots, the symbol of Ganshirajesh, he could not always stop the memory of the fresh, clean air, the gentle breezes, the calls of the sparrows and the doves, the smell of the grass and the soft ground—and the warmth of his lover’s touch. A thousand things that were so much a part of the land of his visions, the land where he belonged that he hadn’t noticed them when he was there.

But the vision was another world. A world that would someday come true the old priest had assured him that first dawn when he had woken with great sobs at the loss of paradise.

But did he want it to? Could any man be content in paradise forever? Never leaving, waiting each day for his lover to come home. Even in a place that was forever spring, a place with no hunger or thirst, where food was for pleasure alone, where no one died and the worse punishment was being force to leave without hope of returning.

Where was this place? This place Vishtani had lived for so long, but where he had never been? How did he know it was always spring there?

No, not spring, but the gentle days of early summer. Early summer—there was something he should remember....

A small acolyte ran down the hall, his hands full of small bags that presumably belonged to the ones chasing him. Acolytes were only allowed one small bag of personal items and they were not allowed to keep that bag on their person. Those boys must not have hidden their bags well enough. The boy smiled at Vishtani as he passed, so he didn’t see two older boys jump at him from the other side.

The stuff in his hand scattered, falling with thumps and crashes. One of the bags came open as it ricocheted off the wall behind Vishtani. The contents, glass good luck baubles, fell around him like rain.

Only one broke, splattering Vishtani’s robes with glass fragments. The small boy began to cry, as did one of the chasers. The other boys searched through the bags on the floor with grumbles and shouts.

The smallest boy whimpered, pointing to Vishtani’s left arm. Although he felt no pain, blood dripped freely onto the grey marble floor. He lifted his loose sleeve and saw a small straight gash just below his elbow.

Vishtani hardly noticed when the boys scattering, when two argued over whether pressure should be applied to the wound or if that would force any glass deeper, when he was led to the infirmary, or when the infirmary priest dug out a shard of blue glass.

The life he knew was over.

***

The infirmary priest made Vishtani spend the night, although he sent everyone else away after bandaging the wounds they received while cleaning up the mess.

Vishtani’s robes were declared a hazard after they cut two acolytes who were trying to clean them. His new ones weren’t the normal acolyte grey or even priest black. They were white, but not the unbleached color that avatars wore while in the temple. He felt like a virgin sacrifice, if he could still be called a virgin after all his visions.

When he asked what the color meant he was told that a vision had come explaining the god-like name the shrine priest had given him—beloved of the light before dusk.

He tried to keep busy, but the infirmary priest put limits on what was allowed until he was fully healed, so he was in the courtyard when the avatar arrived.

The avatar was tall with dark skin and straight black hair, but Vishtani recognized him at once. Or at least the god within him.

Vishtani raced inside, feeling eyes on his back.

“Still running?” asked the infirmary priest as Vishtani passed him.

“I haven’t even begun.”

Vishtani tried to avoid the visitor, but after supper the Head Priest called him to the head table. The avatar stood up as he arrived. The priests looked as if they wish to gossip about this strange behavior and the infirmary priest raised an eyebrow while looking from Vishtani to the avatar and back.

Vishtani bit down his unease at seeing his lover’s expression on the stranger’s face.

“I am through with waiting.”

“It hasn’t healed.”

“That was the future.”

“You mean….”

“Yes, I could have come—”

“No.”

The avatar laughed. “Yes. Fate says you are mine.”

“But does she say when?”

The avatar did not answer and Vishtani turned to go. A hand ran down his arm. He jerked away and kept going, the feeling too close to what he had known but not close enough.

Behind him the Head Priest apologized for his behavior, but the avatar just laughed, saying that it was finally getting interesting.

His lover, Prodoshvar of the Summer Hills, the god of Twilight, fourth son of the Great God Ganshirajesh, had finally come for him. They would leave in the morning, the High Priest said. But this man, this avatar, was not his lover. Although Vishtani was fairly certain the god didn’t see it that way. He would not be able fathom Vishtani's reluctance to be taken by the avatar.

There had to be a way. Vishtani wound his way down the corridors until he found the storeroom he was looking for. This was the place where outside clothes were kept for the avatars. When priests journeyed from the temple they simply wore their robes, but gods liked to dress up.

Everything Vishtani needed was there: boots, pants, tunics, stockings. He grabbed a few of each, dressed, covering the clothes with his robe, and packed the rest in a shoulder bag. Memories of his travels came to him. This would work.

The sky was black before he left the storeroom, his pack not quite full. He crept into a rarely used classroom for the last of his things: a small pouch still half full of coins that he’d brought with him from the hamlet and the lock of hair he’d been found with.

The hair was golden and wavy and it never dirtied or tangled no matter how much he touched it. This wasn’t his mother’s hair as the villagers had always believed. It wasn’t even human hair. One whiff brought memories of paradise.

He tucked these two precious things against his skin and arranged his robes again over his outside clothes. In the kitchens, he found the food the kitchen priests had pack for them to take the next morning. He shouldn’t let it go to waste.

The avatar was in the chapel, deep in a vision. This was perfect. Prodoshvar had left the man’s body, which wasn’t unusual. Most gods hated the all night vigils. If they wanted to speak to their father, they simply stepped over for a visit.

Vishtani gently rocked the kneeling man until his body stiffened. So this is what it looked like from the outside. He whispered his apology to the man, as he gently tipped him over, keeping his head from hitting the stone floor.

The man began to struggle; Prodoshvar was coming back. Vishtani leaned down to kiss him. He pulled back just as soon as his lover got control of the avatar’s mouth. “Prodoshvar, I’m going.”

“Run,” Prodoshvar said, still on his back, unable to even lift his head. “Run. Hide. Fate says I will find you. No matter how far you run, you will never get away.”

Vishtani laughed. “Chase me. Not with an avatar, but with this you.” Vishtani dug out his precious lock of hair and rubbed it across his own neck, sending shivers up his spine. “Chase me. Catch me. Make me want to stay.”

Prodoshvar’s eyes went wide when he saw the hair, but he could do nothing, even as Vishtani walked away.

As Vishtani passed the temple gates, he heard a voice behind him. “Do you still think you can run?”

Vishtani turned and looked at the infirmary priest. “I can run, just watch me. But if you mean will I get away, no, I don’t expect to.”

“Then why run?”

“I’m not trying to get away. I am running towards something—towards happiness.”

The sky was full of stars as Vishtani took his first running steps towards a thousand years in paradise.

The End

***

Author’s note:

The names were from my day of Fun with Sanskrit. I looked up names and piled prefixes and suffixes together until the names meant what I wanted them to then I changed a letter here and there.

Vishtani (VISH tah nee) beloved (or consort) of the light before dusk

Prodoshvar (pro dosh vahr) god of twilight

Ganshirajesh (GAHN shee rah jehsh) great creator god king.

The idea behind this story was if your fate and future was already decided, even a future you might enjoy, would you allow yourself to be lead there passively?