The Stony Gaze in Modern Day

Chapter 2: Turning a Blind Eye

Someone is coming. I can hear them… The cliffs' loose stone tumbled as human limbs shifted closer to the opening of the new lair. I must do something. I must hide and when they come into view, I will freeze them, like everyone else…

A hand comes into view. Pulling up was a young lad in strange modern clothing. Times certainly changed since the beginning of her exile, but to see it so closely now… The lad pulls into the cave's opening and sits, resting and panting as he dusts himself off. He seemed to be looking around a bit as the creature slowly began to slither and slink her way over while the lad’s back was turned. Closer and closer, making her presence known with a hiss as the lad looked around.

“Snakes? I didn’t think snakes could reach this far up…”

Believe me, a snake will not be the last thing you ever see, filthy little man. The creature was soon at his back as she noticed something on his face. A pair of tinted spectacles. Must be something new in the modern world. No matter, he would still turn if he can see well through those anyway. She slowly reaches down and forces the lad to turn and face her as she hisses, her eyes meeting his gaze….. But nothing happens. The lad does freak out and back away, tripping and hitting his head on the nearby cave wall, knocking him out. What happened? Did the spectacles somehow block her gaze? She slinks over and slips the dark glasses off his face and goes to open his eyes. Something wasn’t right. Why didn’t he turn to stone? She brings him to the opening for better lighting as she sees what really saved him from his fate. His eyes were clouded over, impairing his vision permanently. The lad was blind. A blind climber? What nonsense and yet here he was, still warm and breathing. She places the lad down against the wall and began to pace around the cave, wondering what else she must do. Will she let him live or drop him?

She looks at one of the old statues of one of her sisters and sighs. “Don’t look at me like that, Verena. I know I shouldn’t kill a child, but that child is almost a man. You know how I hate men.” She turns to another statue of a young woman who was unfortunate enough to meet her gaze before. “Really, Lyciera, that kind of language is not tolerated in my cave. I told you, that is a man. A blind man, sure, but still a man… He survived my gaze, but he still cannot be allowed to live.” She turns to another statue, the first sister she froze. “Pericia, please…. Don’t look at me like that. You know I cannot stand your saddening gaze, little sister…. Oh fine! I’ll let the twerp live! But first, I must seize any weapons he may have with him.”

She slithers back to the lad and begins to remove his travel pack from his back and waves her hand to light the torches in the cave. She opens the pack and begins to dig through it. The first thing she pulls out is a book. She looks at the cover and sees nothing but strange bumps on it. She opens it and sees more of the same bumps in a strange pattern. “What is this?” She tosses the book aside and keeps digging, pulling out some water and food rations from the pack. “I haven’t had human food in ages… Maybe I’ll try whatever this is.” She takes a protein bar and takes a bite, wrapper and all as she chews. She quickly spits it out and rubs out her tongue as the snakes on her head gagged with her. “Disgusting! Why does such a thing exist?!” She tosses it away and keeps digging, soon finding a flat, square, smooth device. “Hmmm?” She sees a button at the bottom as she presses onto it, the display flashing on. “Oooohhh… Pretty….” She looks at the display for a moment. It was a funny swirl of colors blending and cascading along the- wait, why did it go black? “Where did it go?” She presses the button again as it shows her the display again. “There! There it is…. Where is such a place? Perhaps I could live in peace among such colors….” Suddenly, the device vibrates, causing her to yelp and drop the thing and quickly hide behind a stalagmite, listening to it vibrate before it quieted down. “It moves… the thing moves…” She slowly peeks at the device and slowly slithers toward it. A new display was on. “What are these letters? I cannot understand them…”

She decides to set it aside for now and digs into the pack once more, finding something small. She looks at it and sees a clip on it. Curious, she pulls the clip as the small thing suddenly extended into something resembling a skinny white walking stick. She eeps and drops it before picking it back up and looking it over. “What strange objects this boy has…. What does he use this for?” She swings it a bit, noticing how light it was. “If this is a weapon, it must be weak considering its lightness…. It cannot be a weapon, but….” She swings it around, nearly giggling to herself in delight. “This is really enjoyable!”

A soft groan could be heard from the boy as she quickly drops the stick and slithers over to him, wondering if she could try the gaze once again. As the lad opened his eyes again, he looked right at her, making eye contact, but still not freezing into stone.

“What… happened to me?” He starts to feel along the wall and the ground. “I thought I felt someone…. Must have been my imagination…” His hand reached along the air as he felt something warm and scaly. He flinches, pulling his hand back and cowering against the wall a bit. “Wh-Who’s there?”

She moves back and frowns at the boy. Of course… he’s like the others… afraid… alone… a man. “Why have you come to my home?”

“H-Huh? A… A Grecian? I-I’m sorry, I don’t speak much Greek…. I-Is there anyone who could possibly speak English?”

English? Of course, I’ve heard of these people…. That must be what those letters were… I heard many of them when I watched from here… I wonder if…. “My…. Home……”

“Your…. I’m in your home, yeah? H-How did…. I get here?”

“....Ascended…. You climbed….”

“You have a home along the cliffs of Olympus? How is that even possible??”

“Easy….”

“Th-Then…. I didn’t mean to break into your home… I thought it was a cave I could rest in… I wanted to see if I could reach the top of this legendary mountain… I had no idea someone was living within it.”

“......This is a cave…. My Cave… You adventurers never cease…”

“Adventurers? Oh no… I was just crossing something off my bucket list… Mount Everest was too impossible for someone like me, but I still wanted to climb….”

“Bucket…. List?”

“Yeah…. It’s a list of all the things you want to do before you die…. You uh… n-never heard of it?”

“.....So this list… you make it and then you do the things you listed?”

“Well… as best as I can, I suppose… So I have no regrets… But I guess the whole no regrets thing was impossible. I uh… I really didn’t mean to break in, I swear…”

“.....Get up, boy….”

“I-I’m 23…”

She hisses at him. “Get up!”

The lad quickly gets up and dusts himself off. “I’m up!”

“Tch…” She turns to a frozen little boy. “Can you believe this boy? Oh, wait… you probably can…”

“Oh… Are there other people here?”

“It is just me…”

“Then… who are you talking to-”

“Nevermind…. Now….. I must know….. How much have I missed since 701?”

“701?”

“What is the term after…. BCE?”

“BC… Wait… What are you?”

“You would shriek in horror if I reveal who I am… and I would have to kill you after…”

“I’m a blind kid…. Who would believe me if I can’t even see?”

“......Tell me, boy.... what do you know about the Gorgon Medusa?”