The Sight of Ordinary Things
by Chapel Oak O’Connor
The first dawn of early spring always felt different from the days that came before. I could smell the mist in the mountains and feel the chill still in the air. The last frost was still due, according to Mother. But today, after a mild winter on our farmstead, everything was pale green, damp and soft. I was tossing grain for the chickens as the sun rose, listening to them cluck and fuss.
I didn’t hear the stranger’s footsteps squishing in the mud until he was twenty feet behind me.
It was a strange sight to see a man so clean, in a county where men get their hands dirty for their bread. His face was well filled out with health, and his garments, though drab, were well-constructed. He also wore a leather backpack with a belt strapped across the middle of his chest. I could not tell his profession; he wasn’t a hunter or a trapper, not with his cleanliness or his nicely tailored clothes. He was a strangeness.
“Hello,” he said.
I stared. I didn’t know the word; it was as odd as his appearance. He seemed to realize this quickly.
“I’m sorry... Good morning,” he said with a small smile. He was too far away for me to see his eyes, but he stood awkwardly, as if not used to having his feet on the wet earth.
“Good morning,” I said politely. I cast the last handful of seed at the hens and turned to face the stranger fully.
“My name is David,” he said. He spoke loudly and slowly, as though we did not speak the same language. His accent was strong, but his words were clear enough to my ear.
“I am a scholar,” he said, “and I have been... researching the animals in the area. The birds, the, ah... animals, in early spring. And I have been staying with families who have room. I will clean and chop wood and be helpful, if you let me stay.”
I stood, thinking. Men would sometimes pass through on their way north or west, staying for a day, or five days, or two weeks. My favorite stayed for a month and played his fiddle after supper every day but Sunday. Papa liked to meet these men and make friends of them, but if David didn’t have a fiddle, I was not sure Mother could be convinced of more than a fortnight.
“I have no say,” I said to the stranger, “but I’ll ask my mother.”
David nodded. “Good. Thank you,” he said, still calling out his words as if standing across a clearing.
As I passed to go into the house, I peeked at David’s eyes. He was looking past me at the hens still worrying the dirt. His eyes seemed far away for a moment, like he was remembering something or wanting something.
For a moment it reminded me of the way my father would look out at the homestead very early on Sunday mornings, wistful, and grateful for the day. But though it was a familiar feeling, the stranger’s eyes held something more, something curious I couldn’t place.
Inside the house, Mother was standing over the stove. My instinct was right: she asked me how long the stranger was planning to stay and did not seem inclined, by the sound of him, to let him bunk with us like other working men. She told me that since he was already here, he could stay the night, but we would have to speak with Papa and Thomas when they came in from foraging. They had left before the sun rose, so it wouldn’t be long now.
I went back out to tell the stranger what she’d said, and I found him crouched near the chicken coop, peering down at something and writing in a small notebook. He stood up and slipped the book into his back pocket as I approached.
“Mother said you can stay for tonight, but we’ll need to speak with Papa about longer,” I told him.
David smiled again and now I could see his teeth. They were very straight and eggshell-white.
“Oh, thank you,” he said. “I’m in your debt. Very grateful. What’s your name?”
I looked towards the house, then to the stranger. “Mary.”
“Mary,” he repeated. His voice softened and I could hear his smile in it. “Thank you. I will do any task that needs to be done.”
Mother appeared in the doorway now, and as I saw her, David did too. He nodded back at me, then walked away, raising a hand to greet her.
I stooped down to see what David had been looking at. It was just an earthworm. It wriggled slowly and disappeared down into the mud.
I stood there in the misty morning, thinking about David’s clean clothes, his white teeth, his satisfied tone upon hearing my name. There was nothing I could glean from it except a feeling of being unsettled.
I did not know if it was a feeling of evil, but I knew it was one of wrongness.
But David was true to his word all morning, even as the men were taking their time coming back. He fetched water and stacked wood and swept out the house. He did it all, strangely awkward at first but seeming to savor every chore. I could not help myself but glance at his face more than was polite. All I could tell was that his determined expression reminded me of my mother.
When Papa came back from the woods with his plants and mushrooms, David knew the names of every one. And when Mother fretted about cold rain turning to ice, he told her to scatter salt along the path to keep it from freezing. These things impressed my parents so much that they welcomed him to stay as long as he wished.
At supper that night, he talked matters of science, theology and philosophy. Once it became clear we could understand his speech despite his accent, he stopped drawing out his words and spoke with the clear, present way of a well-educated man. I could tell that he was being very careful to use terms we could understand, even while the subjects were beyond much of our understanding. There were no more strange words like “hello.”
My father and brother were enraptured from the start. My mother warmed up slowly. I just watched.
After supper, the sun set behind the clouds and the hills. The last scraps of pink light faded, then the clouds dispersed, and the night chill crept in. Stars began to twinkle through the weakening mist. The evening star was just visible behind a budding tree as I locked the coop and checked the fences. There was no moon. My breath fogged only in the light of the steady lantern. Low voices from the house became clearer for a moment as someone opened and shut the door quietly.
Then there was a gasp, sudden and arresting. I whirled around.
It was David.
He was stock-still, face turned up to the sky, mouth slightly open. When I ran to him and brought my lantern closer, I could see his eyes welling with tears.
I looked up to where he was staring. It was only the night sky, but David’s breath seemed to have stopped at the sight.
“David?”
He started and then stared at me. “Mary.” He blinked quickly and looked down at his feet. “I... I beg your pardon.”
He looked up again. His mouth worked to stay stoic, but his eyes brimmed with a pain and a wonder that was deep and dark. It was as though he was trying to communicate something to me without speaking. Something awesome and important that I could not grasp. Despite myself, my heart stirred, and I was moved.
“Just let me be, Mary,” he murmured at last.
I backed away, frightened as I was saddened, not knowing what to say. I placed the lantern on the ground and left him alone in the night.
When I went out after dawn, I found David laying on a rough blanket under the open sky. He was already awake and looked as though he had hardly slept at all. His eyes snapped to me as I approached, but he only smiled wearily, saying nothing.
We completed morning chores together and did not speak of the stars, but the space between us strained with unspoken words.
David stayed with us for nineteen days more. There were no more incidents like the first night, but David never stopped seeming like a stranger to this world. He did truly anything that needed doing: cleaning, milking, cooking, fishing, mending. And though he sometimes needed guidance, he relished the work like no other man before. David would gut a trout with reverence, or test the heft of a cast iron pan as if he’d never held one. One day he slipped in the mud and fell in the river, and his embarrassed laughter rang out just like my brother’s.
And David always wrote in his notebook when there was light to see it by. I did not ask questions, only observed, but curiosity burned in me every day.
Towards the end of his stay, he began to show me his pencil drawings, crude but deliberate: a dragonfly, a robin, a beech. The pages were filled with alien writings... recognizable shapes, but foreign spellings. I could not make anything of it, as hard as I tried.
At supper on the last night, he announced his plans to move on at first light. So early we would not even hear him take his leave, he said, as he did not want to disturb us.
My heart soured at the thought that I might never solve his strangeness. I watched his face in the candlelight, as I had every night since the first, watching for a hint of that strange pain to flash again.
It did not, but David caught me looking. “Mary, will you help me secure the fence tonight?” he asked.
Alone, he seemed to mean, so we can speak.
I nodded, my bitterness replaced by satisfaction, then confusion. Despite all David had done for our homestead, I had never been able to warm up to him completely. All I’d done was watch him closely, sometimes thinking that if I could stare at him hard enough, I could begin to hear his thoughts.
I thought I had been secretive enough. But now, his eyes bore into me just as hard. He must have sensed my curiosity after all.
Outside, after supper, my lantern shone warm against the cold light of the half-moon. We stood by the fence gate. The first spring frogs had begun chirruping in the woods.
David sighed as he looked up towards the evening stars. I saw his eyes begin to water.
“I have something I’d like to tell you,” he said, looking down and out across the homestead clearing, “but you must promise me you’ll keep it secret. My very life depends on it.”
He turned to look at me. Deep and unknowable sadness was dancing in his eyes. “I know that you want to know who I am and what I’m doing here. I’ll tell you before I go, but I need you to promise. I need you to swear to God, Mary.”
A small spark of thrill went through my innards. “Is it that important?” I asked.
David only nodded, holding my gaze.
I wavered. But I wanted to know, desperately. I straightened my back and said, “I swear to God, I will not tell a soul as long as I live.”
David nodded, sighed and glanced down. He began to speak with stops and starts, choosing his words almost one by one.
“I come from a place where people live underground, in a sealed cave made into a home. There are no birds or beasts, and there is no sky, only rock around us. Those in power destroyed our land, and nothing grows in the world outside.”
He looked up and out at the dark homestead.
“We grow food in special rooms,” he continued, “and read books and try to survive each day. We are trying to begin again and to learn what was... w what is here, so we can grow things and tend animals and return the earth to the way it should be.” He stopped for a moment.
My breath was shallow and quick in my chest.
“You will never know this place,” he continued, more steadily now. “I was sent as a scientist. A scholar, an explorer. I volunteered to stay with your family here and now. Though I can never tell you my reason, not even after you swore to it.”
David smiled sadly. “I had never seen the stars,” he murmured, “until that first night.”
As I heard this, my heart ached, even as my mind spun. I tried to imagine living in a rocky cave all my life. No animals, no sunlight. It seemed like torment.
From what I could tell, David thought so, too. “It’s so beautiful here,” he said, “and that’s why I must go. If I stay an hour longer, I’ll want to stay forever. And I can’t. I just can’t.”
He looked up at the sky again. I looked, too. Some clouds had begun to cover the stars, but the moon shone faintly through. “I’ll be leaving very soon,” he said. “Please don’t watch for me.”
I moved my lantern to my left hand, then extended my right hand out, as Papa did for each departing man taking his leave. David looked surprised, then smiled again, gentle and still sad. He clasped my hand firmly.
I tried to strengthen my grip, to hold his hand for a moment longer, but it was too late. He slipped away.
But then, almost as an afterthought, he reached out and patted my cheek. “Thank you, Mary,” he said. “I’ll tell my fellows about your family’s kindness.”
We secured the fence, and I followed him back into the house.
I stayed up to watch him go, despite what he had said. I peeked through the doorway a moment after he stepped out.
The moon shone just enough for me to see his figure against the tree line. He raised his right arm to his face and murmured into his wrist.
His wrist glowed from within. A shimmering column of yellow and blue and crimson lit up the night with a sizzling, whirling sound. I covered my ears and squeezed my eyes shut.
Then there was a bright flash, and the night was utterly silent.
I let go of myself and looked out at where he had been.
There was nothing.
I braced myself against the doorjamb, heart quick in my chest. As I replayed the scene in my mind, I thought about David, frantically trying to make sense of something senseless.
I remembered the way he was on the very first day. His clothes, unusually tidy. His face, shaven and well-fed. The way he seemed to know me without knowing me. His eyes, so reminiscent of my father’s, and his expressions, like my mother’s. My brother’s laughter coming out of his mouth. Such a disquieting and distant familiarity.
Something inscrutable had happened to us. Try as I might, I could not grasp it. I stood in the doorway for a long time and watched the clouds shroud the world in a strange and quiet darkness.
Copyright © 2026 by Chapel Oak O’Connor
