Wendy would press down on her eyes with the tips of her chubby fingers. There she'd sit. Pressing, feeling the throb of blood rushing through her fingertips and magically passing into the depths of her eyes.

The rain pounded against the worn window screen and she felt the dampness of the air tickle her cheeks. But she wouldn't stop.

The crow, lifting its wings and daring her to look, flew away, while mocking her stubbornness. Wendy didn't need the comfort of sight. She'd rather seek the wonders that dwelled in the darkness. Those electric blue lights that darted behind her fleshy lids, the pink and green dots that flowed from the upper ridges of her eyes and cascaded into a continuous stream of color- they were all comforting to her.

Merely a child of five years, little Wendy knew the secrets of pure joy. Self entertainment, if not self-possession had always been a quality adults envied in their children. But Wendy was beyond such rudiments. There was no need for her to talk to her toys or invent voices for her pets. No, she was capable of much more. She could extract the pleasures of childhood with the simple touch of her fingers.

Wendy's preoccupation disturbed her elders because they saw her as just that- preoccupied. They thought that she should play with other children; laugh, giggle, and be spontaneous. They couldn't understand her magic. In fact, at one point they brought their "troubled" daughter to an expert. The expert assured them that she was going through a phase. It was nothing to worry about. She would stop. They were relieved.

Wendy was relieved as well. She knew how to go along with everyone's plans. The sweet, unassuming child that she was, could easily appease the worries of adults. But once she was alone, her feigned normalcy gave way to her craving for magic.

An experience called for strategic placement of the index finger. Continuous pressure from the side of the finger elicited a completely different experience from that of sporadic pressure applied directly by the fingertip. The first method resulted in a flux of colored geometric patterns and pointillistic blobs. The second, in dark blue circles, shadowing the contact of the fingers in the semblance of the moon eclipsing the sun.

Wendy milked her methods. She would often alternate her finger contact with that of the blur burned into her eyes by the strength of a full sun. By staring at the sun until her precious blue eyes began to melt into tears and then clamping them shut with the mass of her tiny fists, she could witness the exhilaration and horror of a virtual reality that no computer could ever simulate.

Adults are rarely perceptive, if not dull, but they are persistent. Wendy's elders watched her habits and her deception was finally discovered. She protested violently. How could they take away a pleasure that didn't hurt anyone? She couldn't understand their continuous pleas and explanations. They informed her that she could damage her eyes by pushing on them and that staring at the sun could blind her. They wanted to know why she couldn't be satisfied with the beauty of the things that existed in front of her opened eyes. After all, there was so much to see.

With her hands bound behind her back, Wendy slowly rolled her eyes back into their sockets and the drone of many voices blended with the darkness she now saw. She pulled against the white cotton restraints that kept her from seeking the magic she needed.

And with the shrewdness of an old woman jilted by her expectations, she waited. She languished in her prison and her steady decline alarmed everyone. Sympathy was easy to strike in adults, this she knew, and eventually she was, once again, set free.

This time she could not make any mistakes.

No one would detect her habits. Her secrecy would be complete. Poised in front of an opened 12th story window, with the sun streaming in, Wendy restrained herself from impulsively beginning her magic. Anticipation should be just as exciting as the actual event. Then, as if by divine assentation, Wendy shut her eyes and reopened them and stared into the sun's face. Ceremonially she lifted her fingers and slowly, achingly so, brought them into her eyes.

The pain could not match the power of the exploding colors that shattered Wendy's field of vision. Tumbling into the air, she smiled.

The physiological term for seeing ghost images after the eyes are closed or as a result of applied pressure to the retina is called aftersight. Wendy didn't know about this phenomena, for if she did, she wouldn't have perceived her abilities as magical nor would she have plunged her fingers into her eyes. But as the situation stands now, does it really matter?

Olga Alexandra Writes

After Sight