# Chapter 2: The Summit Helmsman **A Dystopian Serial Novel – Part Two**
... to reveal what was churning in his heart, especially to someone he did not trust—and the number of people he trusted and felt comfortable with in his life was highly limited.
Shahin rose from his spot and embraced Thabit with raw passion and longing. They looked like two fragments of a single whole. As the embrace ended, Thabit looked at Shahin’s dust-streaked face; a strained smile parted his lips, carrying a mixture of love and pity.
With a sorrowful expression etched onto his face, Shahin said, "You’ve been gone too long, my friend!" He paused for a moment, then added, "For a blind man, life without a friend is like a hand without fingers."
Thabit laughed from the bottom of his heart, pressing on Shahin’s back to gesture for him to sit. They lay down side by side, pillowing their heads on the grass before the flock of sheep. Meanwhile, Shammam woke up and began rubbing his body against Thabit’s arm, wagging his short tail with his tongue lolling out of his mouth in sheer excitement. Thabit could only respond with a gentle pat on the dog’s firm neck.
Looking up at the sky, Thabit spoke in a warm voice, addressing Shahin, "And for a man who sees, life without money is like a hand without fingers."
"Are you trying to say that our friendship doesn't mean to you what it means to me?"
"No, not at all!"
"Then what?"
"I am trying to say that I need more money to live in a way that befits a young man like me."
Shahin met Thabit’s words with silence and a slight furrow of his brow, then said in a serious tone, "Do you know what your problem is?"
"No. Can you tell me?"
"Your problem is that you are trying to control the course of your life."
"And is it wrong to want control?!"
"It’s not that. Simply put, you are wrestling a phantom bull."
"A phantom bull! What does that mean?"
"Imagine yourself in a square wrestling ring, surrounded by a cheering, clapping crowd. Your enemy here is a massive black bull, snorting fiery breaths from its terrifying muzzle. You gather your strength, wanting to fight it. You wave a red cloth at it, dodging it skillfully like a Spanish matador until your body is drenched in sweat, earning you more applause. Meanwhile, the handler prods it every now and then, fueling its rage even further. In its violent frenzy, you get flustered, making it easy for the beast to corner you.
Your breath catches from fear, and your knees tremble so hard they can barely hold you up. You realize you are undeniably dead. You close your eyes and bare your chest to die a brave man’s death. But the moment the bull's body crashes through you, you feel the exact same warmth a person feels in a hot bath, and you smell your own skin, like the scent of a rusty knife. You open your eyes amidst the wild thumping of your heart, only to discover that this terrifying creature was nothing but steam."
"So... my fear of it was an illusion, my gathering of strength to fight it went to waste, and my crowd would mock me and hurl insults. I suppose the bull symbolizes anxiety."
"Exactly. Stand on solid ground, and do not fight monsters made of steam."
Shahin fell silent for a moment, then added, "All I want you to remember well is this: do not mess with fate. Wait for the sign!"
"The sign?!"
"The divine sign—the one meant to guide you."
"The divine sign," Thabit repeated the phrase, then continued, "The essence of what you said reminds me of a proverb from a novel by the Japanese author Murakami: 'Thinking useless thoughts is worse than not thinking at all.'"
"I love what you say," Shahin replied, "especially when you treat me as an intellectual equal, even though I am a man who has never known how to read in his life. But your talk about the ideas of different lands, and the authors you’ve read, pours a light into my mind like the light coming from a moon—it might be dim, shy, and sleepy, but it shatters the pitch darkness in my mind."
Thabit let out an admiring laugh and said in a cheerful voice, "What amazes me about you is your power of description. It does not fit a man who has lost his sight."
"Perhaps because I wasn't blind from birth."
Thabit fell silent for a moment, then continued, "And your open-mindedness does not fit an ignorant man."
"Here, I cannot be certain. I am amnesiac, as you know, and I do not know what I used to be."
"Could you have been educated?"
"I doubt it! My mind suffers a deficit in remembering the shapes of written words—as I told you a moment ago when I described myself as ignorant. But as for the images of things, I remember them perfectly. I know the shape of the river, the cloud, the sun."
"If you weren't exceptional, you wouldn't have been trusted to shepherd the sheep of the entire village!"
"You mean I wouldn't have become the best shepherd of all, despite being a blind man!"
"Yes, that is what I meant."
"My open insight and my dog, Shammam, are the secret to my success in what I do."
"I have no doubt in your special gift!" Thabit smiled a sweet smile, then added, "And this is the secret of why I am so attached to your friendship, despite the age gap between us."
"Indeed, nothing brings us together but something mysterious and spiritual."
"Then let me speak my mind without parsing words. I came today to complain to you about my financial situation. How am I to bridge the vast gap between my income and the responsibilities I bear?"
"I answered you at the very beginning: wait for the divine sign. Yet you insist on repeating the question time and again."
"Perhaps I am seeking a clarification for your sentence, or perhaps vague, long-term solutions will not satisfy me at the moment."
"Not at all, my friend. By my own intuition, I feel a close blessing hovering around you."
"I am glad to hear this, for I trust your intuition."
Shammam barks unexpectedly, baring his teeth. Shahin rises from his spot—as if he had just received a sign—gripping his long staff and walking toward the sheep.
Thabit shouts, "What’s wrong with you?!"
"Keep silent!"
Through the ripples of the tall green grass, which had not yet been touched by the mouths of the sheep, Shahin slipped away with Shammam by his side, as swiftly as two ghosts.
They reached the panicked black ram. Its eyes were terrified, like those of a lost child, and upon its neck lay an elongated, slimy body that gleamed under the sunlight like a cord of liquid lead.
It was a massive serpent, coiling around the thick neck of the ram, flicking its venomous tongue from its mouth every few seconds. Shahin waited for a brief moment. He spoke to his ram, addressing it in a gentle tone, "Do not fear, Layl. I will save you, just stay calm."
He extended his brown hand in a swift motion, like the flick of a master fisherman's hook, catching the snake by its neck. The ram fled in terror, standing at a distance to watch the snake thrashing in the hands of Shahin, who had tightened his grip firmly around its throat. He placed it upon a rock. He picked up another stone, then crushed the venomous head. The crushing of the head made a wet, hollow sound.
The snake convulsed in involuntary spasms, while Shammam’s rhythmic barking served as a soundtrack to the scene, which ended with the black ram gradually returning to a state of calm. The storm of the serpent subsided as it entered its death throes with desperate twitches.
Thabit looked on, struck with awe, and thought to himself, (Shahin knows the place of every stone in the pasture—this is hard to believe. Does he know the pasture by heart?!)
Swept away by the shock of what had transpired, Thabit shouted, "It is as if you can see, man! As if you can see!"
Shahin shouted back, holding the snake and raising it
high, "The world is the blind one, not me".
To be continued...
Lama, Mother.dragons
[Read Chapter 1 Here]
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