Not all gifts are blessings. Not all curses end in evil.

The stale smell of ancient winds blew over the wasteland. Caustic heat rising from an endless plane of untouched sand and dust joined these winds. Together they brought the scent of age, and of death.

The celestial god of this land slowly dipped toward the horizon, bathing the world in stark colors. Its scarlet light devoured the ground in its blood. So much red. A sea of it. Its crimson hands, ethereal and gnarled, crawled across the empty expanse. They grappled at anything and everything above ground. Eventually, they found purchase on a lone figure’s legs. Gleefully they clawed themselves around their new victim.

The figure was a drop of white ink on an enormous red canvas. Kneeling in the dust, their silvery white/blue hair swayed in the ancient winds. An intricate gray embroidered dress cut off just above their knees, its edges laying in the sand.

The sediment shifted. Moments passed. Yet the figure was still. Their heart beat slowly. The only sign of life for as far as the eye could see. She was a forgotten existence. A foreign shade on the maroon expanse. But in her stillness the ancient wasteland seemed to accept her presence as one of its own.

Just then, a small movement broke the spell of time. A flicker of life entered the girl’s eye. She turned her head as if observing the ground around her. She looked to the horizon at the red god that watched her solitary existence. Light from this direction was distorted and hazy. The girl's eye was clouded over, and she seemed unfocused. But in the deepest reaches of that eye a sharp gleam could be found, straining to overcome the haze.

The old winds seemed to ask the girl questions, but her understanding was just out of reach. The girl’s eyes narrowed. The gleam from earlier was becoming sharper, slowly forcing its way into the waking world. As this happened, a change occurred near the horizon. Her attention drew to this discontinuity. A thin line of shadow could be seen bending in the refracted light.

The girl blinked in acknowledgment. Eventually, the disturbance took the shape of an odd figure, details becoming apparent as it approached. The entity lumbered heavily, swaying from side to side with each long, spindly step. The fur of some dark animal was draped over their shoulders and cascaded down the length of its back. The furs partially covered a mountain of supplies, hidden in shadow and carried in scaffolding strapped to the figure’s shoulders.

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Numerous poles shot out from the scaffolding, their ends weighed down by clouded metal lanterns. Some of these gave off a faint ethereal glow from the inside. Others were dark, their silence weighing heavily on the space around them.

As the figure got closer a sense of scale became apparent between the girl and the creature. The top of its head towered over two meters above the kneeling girl. Its face was a mirage of white and red. Twin black tattoos like jagged lines ran from the top of its head, through the creature's eyes, and down its cheeks. Sparse, reddish-black hair could be seen on the uncovered scalp. In the place of eyes, two large, crescent moon-like bursts of yellow and gold peered down intensely through the dagger-like slits of pupils. An impossibly wide mouth ran the length of the face, ending in a mischievous grin. From that impossible mouth came a raspy, child-like voice with a slightly feminine tint to it.

“Strange place to be daydreaming, but I won’t judge.” Daydreaming? The girl’s gaze lingered between those two eyes. Slowly, she turned her head down to her lap, where she cradled an object with both hands. It was a large eye, seemingly devoid of a sclera. An iris-like nebula of blues, greens, and reds ran the entire surface of the eye - all except a piercing slit of stark lime green in the place of a pupil.

Something wasn’t right. The girl narrowed her eye further. After a moment, it widened in horror. It was one of her eyes that she held. The dam of thought fully burst open then, memories flooding her mind. She tried to grasp and make sense of them, but they kept slipping, like a ship at sea without an anchor. Still, she tried to contain the whirlwind. And with what little progress she made, the more her terror grew. Frantically, she looked up at the being watching her and pleaded.

“I, …, I don’t! … help! Please! My eye! I need my eye! I can’t …, please help!” Thinking was hard. All she knew was that if nothing was done soon, something would break. In fact, something had broken. And It would soon become irreparable.

“Your eye?” The being leaned over the girl, its form blocking the sun and plunging the girl into shadow. “Which one? The one in your hands, or the one on your face?” The creature brought its long, spidery fingers to its chin and tilted its head as if in thought. Its eyes lit up as if coming upon a great revelation. “Ah! I understand. You want me to put the eye in your hands back in your head. Are you sure that is what you want? No eye or a nonfunctional eye, either way you can’t use them to see.” The girl frantically thought, using all of her mental might to organize a cohesive idea.

“Fix, … fix the eye. I want you to, …, Fix my eye.”

“Fix your eye? An odd request, but not unworkable.” The being slowly rose back to its unnatural height. As the creature eclipsed the sun a red halo of light outlined its figure. Its presence changed, and its voice dropped several octaves.

“However, fulfilling this request will cost both you and me. Are you willing to take that onus?” The girl gritted her teeth in concentration. Time was running out.

“Anything, I’ll, …, do anything, just, …, heal my eye.”

“Anything?” That impossibly wide grin grew into an even more impossibly wide and wicked smile. Dozens of sharp silvery teeth made their presence known. “That’s what I like to hear.”

Coldly observing from its celestial throne, the red sun dipped below the horizon, bathing the world in twilight, and heralding the darkness of night.