A drunken night, a party, and a pretty girl. That was all it took for Matthew Colton to make the biggest mistake of his life: getting his date pregnant. He was a twenty-three-year-old fresh out of college and celebrating his graduation with his friends. The girl? She was nineteen, barely into her second year of university and already she was half-buried under student loans. In spite of the impracticality of their situation, they decided to keep the baby. Matthew took two part-time jobs to support them both while he worked on starting his career. His now-girlfriend continued her studies and worked when she could. For a while things were looking up, and those nine months flew by with each being better than the one before. But it couldn't last. Complications during the birth took the girl's life. Matthew hadn't been at the hospital with her; he had a shift that night and they both agreed he shouldn't call in sick. Minutes after his shift ended, he got a call telling him that his girlfriend had passed away and that his son was waiting for him at the hospital. He was heartbroken, devastated even. In the nine months they'd been together, he'd really grown to love the woman who would be the mother of his child--his son--and now that child had taken her away from him permanently.
He took a bus to the hospital, not trusting himself to drive, and was led to the viewing room where his newborn son was sleeping after being fussed over by the doctors. The nurse told Matthew that the mother had named their child Cai--it was an old Welsh name she'd been very fond of--but that she'd left it to Matthew to choose the baby's middle name. He chose Alexander, after his father, and then asked if he could hold his son for a while. His anger at losing his girlfriend had long since faded, or at least wasn't focused on the baby any more. It wasn't Cai's fault that his mother had died, he was only a baby, one of the few things in the world that were truly innocent. Matthew didn't let his son go until it was time for Cai to go back to bed, and in that time he promised them both that he would do his best to be a good father to the boy.
Weeks later, well after Matthew had brought Cai home from the hospital, he took the boy back. He'd noticed something was wrong; Cai never looked directly at him, his eyes always wandered, and he didn't seem to notice when his rattle was waved in front of him. He almost never cried, simply lying there quietly listening to his father. Nothing Matthew had read had mentioned anything like this, but he wanted a doctor's confirmation before he jumped to any conclusions. That hospital visit gave Matthew the first piece of bad news he'd had since his girlfriend's death: his son was congenitally blind. The doctors kept him at the hospital for a while longer, checking for cataracts or glaucoma--any indication that Cai's condition might be reversible. Two weeks and several tests later, the verdict was in: Cai's eyes were useless. He only responded to audio cues, being unable to even recognise bright lights or shapes, as is common with congenitally blind children. There were no cataracts and no glaucoma, so there was nothing that surgery could fix. There was hope, however; a team of specialists, including a teacher for the blind, could help Cai use the senses he had left to their fullest, and could help teach Matthew how to care for his son in light of this new information. It was difficult at first, teaching a baby Cai to respond to speech, sounds and touch rather than searching for a visual cue, but progress was eventually made. When he was four, his father found a teacher to instruct Cai in reading Braille. Matthew learnt how to read the raised dots as well, so that he and his son could read together. He made sure Cai never thought of himself as lesser than other kids his age, and by the time he was off to elementary school, there wasn't much Cai wasn't capable of. He was picked on for the first few months; other boys in his class would hide his things and watch him try to find them, but Cai quickly learnt to listen for anyone who was trying to sneak up on him, and he rarely got it wrong. Eventually, once they realised he knew all their tricks, the bullying stopped and Cai was left alone.
He found that he liked being on his own. He didn't mind having other people around, and he certainly enjoyed company sometimes, but usually he preferred solitude. It was quieter when he was on his own, there were less people screeching and demanding his attention, and he could actually hear himself think. He was a pleasant enough person, always laid-back and indifferent about most things. Those who knew him often came to him with their problems or concerns, knowing that he naturally would understand both sides of the argument and remain objective in his advice--though he rarely spoke. Cai was mainly content to listen, offering his opinion where necessary, and everything said between him and another person was kept strictly confidential.. His father sometimes joked about it, saying Cai could take over the world with all the secrets he had collected. Cai would respond by saying that world domination was too much effort.
Near the end of his high school career, he made a friend--two actually. Cai was approached by a girl called Charlotte and her twin brother one day while sitting in the cafeteria. Charlotte talked a lot, and Cai nodded and said "Yeah" in all the right places. Occasionally he'd use a full sentence, but he didn't want to bother making conversation with a girl who probably had better things to do and other friends she wanted to see. To his surprise, Charlotte and her brother never once seemed to indicate that they'd rather be somewhere else. They appeared to genuinely enjoy his company. Cai had never had anyone he considered a "close friend". Not because people didn't like him, but because he'd never really felt a need to be very close to someone who wasn't his family. The twins were different, Cai liked having them around and he found himself feeling bored when they weren't all together. They rarely fought or argued--except for one minor incident where Charlotte caught him off guard, but Cai soon forgave her for that, since it wasn't really her fault--and they stayed friends long after high school. The twins were among the first people to know all the major developments in Cai's life--his father being the only other person he thought to tell. When he got accepted to university, his first girlfriend, his seeing-eye dog; if Charlotte and her brother weren't the very first people to hear about it, they were at least second in line.
But Cai never told them about the woman he saw, or thought he saw. Cai almost never remembered his dreams, but he remembered this one. It was dark, and empty, there were nightingales singing, and there was a woman's voice he could never recognize, even though it always sounded familiar. She told him things--impossible things--about his mother, about his world, about himself. She told him he had a job to do, and that failure would end with his death. She told him she would help, a little, and she told him to seek out the others, because he couldn't do it alone. Cai woke up in a cold sweat, and tried to convince himself that his late-night coffee run was to blame. He was wrong, and he knew it, but he wasn't ready to accept it until he heard the ravens tapping on his window.
Refreshing Feed...
