The First Dimmening: A Cataract Origin Tale
A Study in Progressive Occlusion, Mature Suffusion, and Divine Aphakia
In the age before the Dimmening, where the gods looked down and the people of the Cataracta looked up and the looking was unobstructed, where even the least vastest of the vast stars can—or could, but probably can—be seen—so begins the Stele of Presbyos. The people could count the black basalt cones of the Bayuda from the river, each peak distinct against the sky. They had one word for truth and sight, and one word for falsehood and fog, which made the events that followed difficult to discuss without also doubting them—and I have given you no reason to doubt me. Have I?
The temple of the Cataractatianites—the demonym accrued syllables as successive translators declined to abbreviate their predecessors—stood at the base of Jebel Barkal, a flat-topped mountain rising from the desert plain. The Kushites would later call it the Pure Mountain, believing their god Amun born behind its southern face. But the Cataracts arrived first, building into its rock a narrow chamber they called the Iris, through which a single aperture admitted or refused all light.
Their ceremonies required aqueous humour—of the humorous kind—a fermented ritual drink whose recipe has not survived, though the vessels have.
Then Sclera, goddess of the outer boundary, quarrelled with her sister Cornea, keeper of the threshold, over who controlled what entered the eye of the sky. Cornea, in her fury, breathed mist upon the land. Sclera hardened the mist to a film—an opacity, in the language of those who came after—and between them they sealed the heavens behind a milky veil. The people of the Cataracta looked up and could no longer resolve the stars. The mountain, no longer clearly visible from the river, was quietly reclassified as the Mostly Pure Mountain, and later, after progressive deterioration, as the Mountain of Conditions.
Who would possibly be interested in a story about #cataracts? Especially one without any juicy laser eye surgery mishaps. The Cataractatianites?
Perhaps.
#vss365 #history #historicfiction #prose #verse #poem #poetry #story #writing #fiction #reading #ancienthistory #historicalfiction
