First Dawn

First Dawn

Meet Julius.
Julius is a superhero.

But he has a problem: his mask has no eye holes and his power isn’t x-ray vision or being a snarky lawyer with owl ears and a shitty insurance policy.

And so in the streets our hero roams a perpetual night with no hope for the proverbial scissors or a vested hound for guiding. His gait is a drunken power walk and his hands stretch in all the directions for some grip on reality, fingers flayed in vain hope. His suit is specked with the spice of gutter life, his cape torn and ragged, his soul pocked. Some superhero.

It seems to him that the world avoids those outstretched fingers, keen to skirt around the anomaly like the sneakiest of marco polo players. But he has not lost hope yet, not for lack of failure I assure you.

So stumbles he does to the brink of the world and turns a weary face to the mirror. A mirror with its own light and a bevel that craves envy. But he can see nothing and to him a mirror is a mere window and a window is but a door through which you must squeeze. He tucks the right parts and dives headfirst into the land of reflection, to land in his own footprints. Only this time, the air is warmer, sweeter. The decay of the world has stayed its breath for one moment of tranquility in our wayward hero, his nose granting brief reprieve from blindness as he falls to his knees upon the hard pavement, waving his arms in praise to the mirror god and his unquestionable righteousness. He forgets he’s in public.

A jubilant and overexcited hand finds in accident the meaning of serendipity: a wrist onto which to grab, a voice unto which to listen. The stranger offers a whoa and a lift, righting the zero, and grants the gift of his name, Apollo. They walk and they whimsy and they gab about geese. Who needs the hound when you have the map? Who needs help when you have a tank?

For millennia every second the two bask in the majesty of meeting another superhero, sharing stories of sordid exploits or scary shaves. They prompt each other with queries on their powers, Apollo having the gift of uplift, Julius the gift of surreal. They dance a tango of interwoven intrigue and parry each step with one complementary. After a lifetime of their jubilee Apollo finally asks why the man has no sight, to which Julius responds with only a depressed shrug and a tear to the earth. So Apollo works his magic and waves over the man’s mask his hands in a complicated tut, finishing in a reveal of two perfect eye holes through which the ocean may peer.

For the first time in his little superhero life, Julius sees the land around him, the mirror through which he came and the road littered with parked cars and laymen before him. It turns out that the world Julius once thought to be dark and hostile is actually bright and friendly. The passersby wave cheer and no object, animate or otherwise, leaps out of the way of a cordial embrace. The air is not really dank and putrid; just dank, and for a whole other reason. He turns to his savior with a curious smile and a grateful giggle as they lock arm in arm and set off to save the world.

To the man who has become my everything, the air in which I breathe, the bread in which I eat, the souls in which I reap, to the man who bests the rest with flying colors and sassy returns, to the love of my life, happy birthday Kyle. Thank you for being my Apollo. Thank you for gifting me sight again. Now lets go save the world, or rule it.