"Apan katingad-an kaayo siya, but she was very strange..." Tungod kay siya adunay talagsaon nga mga bahin, ugis kaayo siya, because she had unusual features; she had white skin."
With Nai Ceri's vocal presence narrating from a vacuum void in the background, I realized I was traveling through a time loop, cross-cutting through segmented moments in her story.
Scenes would suddenly appear before me as Nai directed in real-time, casting me as the "extra," witnessing it all unfold and often jumping from scene to scene as her story unfolded.
Unlike her parents and the tigabanua, the people of the village, whose attributes were dark complexion, pug-nosed, squat, and broad, Ayu Indah was anak ug engkanto, a faery child.
Her hair was pale gold like corn silk, her smooth skin was the color of its husk, and her eyes had translucent glints like a spring pool of water reflecting the blue of the sky, which turned reddish pink under bright sunlight or purple when she's moody or upset.
Her mother claimed that she made lihi o panamkon and conceived Ayu Indah with cravings for tiniguib na mais, or white corn.
Delicate and frail-looking, oval-faced, pallid, alabaster white skin, those who saw Ayu Indah believed her to be an engkanto or a tagibanwa, a changling child, a child exchanged by the fairies.
Some say she's a Bathaluman, a little goddess in human form, and they revere her as such. Others called her a "manulunda" angel or "suwaw," for when she stands under the sunlight, she glows.
Indeed, she was dazzling to look at, and the people could not help but stare and stare, captivated by her rare appearance. Just as I was mesmerized.
True to her name, Indah grew up to be so extremely unusual that locals, in awe of her beauty, called her Ayu, which means very beautiful. Mystified, they fell silent in her presence.
Even the Kepala Suku, the chieftain of their village, desired her as a "talisman," the chosen match for his putra sulong, his eldest son, the warrior, and future chief, Tokoh.
"Sa sayo pa, gisaaran na siya kang Tokoh..." Early on, Ayu Indah was promised, in marriage to Tokoh, that she would marry him when she reached marriageable age.
YOU ARE READING
Tales Of The Wisp ~AYU INDAH
FantasyWhat just happened?" I ask aloud, shaking my head to dispel the fog clouding it. "Pa?" "Honey!" I called out for my husband. "Paaaa!" I shouted, my voice slicing through the stillness, desperation lacing each syllable. Silence hung in the air, a hea...
