Chaos → Confusion → Clarity
The young man stood at the cave entrance covered in flies.
Not a few. Not the occasional buzzing visitor that plagued anyone who worked near waste or death. A cloud of them—moving with him, settling on his shoulders, crawling through his hair, following him like a shadow made of wings and compound eyes.
The gathered tribes stirred uneasily. Some children pointed. A few elders made warding gestures.
Wenh watched from her place beside the fire, now forty-four years old, the faded Coat of Many Colors draped across her shoulders despite the evening warmth. Her moldavite pendant caught the firelight—still green, still luminous after thirty-six years. She did not make warding gestures. She smiled.
The young man walked forward with the careful, measured steps of someone who had learned long ago that sudden movements drew attention, and attention meant mockery. His hands were stained dark—clay, earth, something else. His simple brown tunic was patched and worn. His feet were bare, callused from walking through muck and worse.
But his eyes were clear. Intense. Watching everything with the same focused attention his aunt had shown at sixteen, standing before this same cave with a meteor fragment in her hand.
Weiknos, sitting beside Wenh, made a soft sound of recognition. He knew that look. He'd worn it himself.
The young man stopped before the priest circle. The flies settled around him, a living aura. In the firelight they seemed almost beautiful—wings catching orange and gold, creating a shifting halo.
"I am called Benbhubh," he said. His voice was quiet but carried. "Lord of the Flies."
A few suppressed laughs from the outer circles. The name was known. The mockery was understood.
"My mother named me Semnos. He Who Brings Together." He paused, let the flies crawl across his arm. "But Benbhubh is the name that matters. Because the flies taught me what you could not see."
Serepna, now twenty-eight and sitting in the priest circle, leaned forward. Her eyes had the same uncomfortable intensity they'd carried at fourteen. She'd been asking questions for half her life now. She recognized someone with answers.
"I will tell three stories," Benbhubh said. "Three times I found pattern in chaos. Three times the invisible became visible. Three times the flies showed me the way."
He knelt beside the fire, hands moving through dirt, beginning to draw. Not decorative patterns—technical diagrams. Flows. Systems. Infrastructure.
"The first story begins with sickness and ends with a name I learned to hate."
The Invisible Sickness
Benbhubh draws as he speaks—lines showing water flow, marks for waste pits, circles for the well. His hands move with the precision of someone who has mapped these patterns a thousand times.
I was fifteen when the sickness came.
It started with the children near the central well. Fever, cramping, then the flux that emptied them from both ends until they were hollow, dried husks. Two children dead in three days. Then their parents. Then the families who lived near them.
The elders gathered, confused. Was it cursed food? Bad air? Evil spirits in the water? They tried everything—new herbs, different grain stores, prayers, offerings. Nothing worked. The sickness spread.
I watched it move through the settlement like... like something alive. Like it had intention. Like it was hunting.
He marks dots on his dirt map—each one a sick family.
See? Here, near the well. Then here. Then here. Following the slope of the land. Moving downhill. But nobody else saw pattern. They saw random misfortune.
I spent days walking the settlement, tracking every sick family, mapping their locations. And I saw what everyone else missed: they all drew water from the same well.
Points to the circle he's drawn.
But wells don't make people sick. Water from deep earth is clean. That's what everyone knew. That's what the elders said. "Water from the stone is pure."
So I kept looking. Followed the sick families backward. What connected them besides the well?
And that's when I found it.
Draws a square uphill from the well.
A waste pit. New, dug only two moon-cycles before the sickness started. Someone had dug it close to the settlement because they were lazy. Didn't want to walk far to throw their refuse.
I knelt beside that pit in the morning sun, staring at it. And that's when the flies found me.
Hundreds of them. Rising from the pit in clouds, settling on my skin, crawling through my hair. I tried to wave them away at first. But there were too many. And they were... purposeful. Like they were showing me something.
I followed them. Down the slope. Toward the well.
And I understood.
Draws a line from the waste pit to the well.
Underground. The waste was traveling underground. Through cracks in the rock, through loose soil, seeping downward with every rain. And the well shaft—it was intercepting that flow. Contaminated water mixing with clean. Invisible. Inevitable.
I ran to the elders, covered in flies, desperate to explain.
"The waste pit!" I said. "It's too close to the well! The bad water is traveling underground, mixing with the clean water, that's why—"
They stared at me. At the flies crawling on my arms. At the dirt under my fingernails. At this strange boy who spent his days digging in refuse pits.
"Waste doesn't travel," one elder said firmly. "It stays where you put it."
"But I can show you—"
"You're fifteen years old. What do you know of sickness? Of water? Of anything besides digging in filth?"
A few people laughed. Not cruel, exactly. Just... dismissive. The way adults laugh at children who think they understand the world.
That's when I heard it. First time. A child's voice, singsong and mocking:
"Benbhubh! Benbhubh! The Fly-Lord speaks!"
He stops drawing, looks up at the witnesses.
They meant it as joke. Maybe not even meant to be cruel. But the name stuck. Within days, everyone was saying it. Even my mother sometimes slipped: "Benbhubh—I mean, Semnos—"
My own name disappeared. I became the punchline.
And all the while, people kept dying.
The outbreak killed seventeen people before it subsided on its own. Eventually people stopped using that well. Didn't know why. Just... felt wrong. The sickness stopped.
But nobody believed me. Nobody saw the connection. And I was left with a name I hated and knowledge I couldn't share and fury at a world that wouldn't see what the flies had shown me.
Long pause. The flies settle on his shoulders like a mantle.
That's when I started watching. Really watching. The flies, the water, the waste, the underground rivers nobody believed existed. I had eight years to learn. Eight years to become what they named me.
Eight years until the sickness returned.
The witnesses are silent. Wenh nods slowly—she knows this story. The prophets are always mocked before they're proven right.
Benbhubh wipes away his dirt drawing and begins a new one.
The Experiments
His second map is more complex—multiple test pits, water table markings, flow directions.
For four years, I dug.
Not just one pit. Dozens. Hundreds of tests. I needed to understand the invisible kingdom—the world beneath our feet where water flowed and waste traveled and contamination spread in patterns nobody acknowledged.
I dug test pits at different depths. Different distances from water sources. Different soil types. I watched them fill with rain, watched them drain, tracked where the water went. I made clay plugs to mark underground water and watched them move downslope over weeks. I learned to read moisture in soil, seepage in stone, the language of aquifers.
And I learned to read the flies.
He holds up one hand, lets flies walk across his palm.
At first, I hated them. They were my shame made visible—proof that I was Benbhubh, the boy who lived in filth. I bathed constantly. Changed clothes. Waved them away obsessively.
But they always came back.
So one day I stopped fighting. I sat beside a waste pit, covered in flies, and I just... watched them.
They weren't random. They had patterns.
Where they swarmed thickest—that's where organic waste was richest. Where they moved in streams—that showed air flow, which showed how gases vented from underground. Different species congregated in different locations—some preferred fresh waste, some older decay, some the moist edges where contamination met groundwater.
The flies were reading the waste. And I could read the flies.
Several witnesses shift uncomfortably. This is strange knowledge. Uncomfortable knowledge. But undeniably true.
I followed them backward one day. From a well where they clustered to their source upslope. Found a hidden waste pit someone had dug too close, tried to conceal. The flies revealed it.
That's when I stopped being ashamed. The flies weren't my curse. They were my teachers. They showed me the invisible kingdom.
He draws an ancient structure—careful lines showing timber reinforcement.
I found something else during those years. An old well, from a settlement that came before ours. Much older. The timber lining was rotted, but you could see the craft. See the knowledge.
They knew. The ancestors who built this—they knew about contamination, about distances, about underground water. They built their wells far from waste. They lined them with good timber. They understood.
But that knowledge had been lost. When our settlement grew quickly after the innovations started—the goat-work, the vessels, the questions, the colors, the feast protocols—we just expanded. Built fast. Forgot the old rules. Or never learned them.
I was rediscovering what the ancestors had known. Through flies and dirt and endless digging.
Pause. He looks at Serepna.
There was a child who used to watch me work. Twelve years old, asking strange questions. "Why do you dig there? What are you looking for? How do you know the water moves?"
Most people asked those questions like I was crazy. She asked them like she actually wanted to know. Like she was testing her own understanding against mine.
Serepna smiles slightly. She remembers. She was that child.
Her questions helped me think. Helped me understand my own knowledge. Pattern recognizing pattern.
But still, nobody listened. Four years of work. Four years of understanding. Four years of being Benbhubh, the Fly-Lord, the boy who digs in shit.
And then the Great Sickness returned.
He wipes the dirt clean again. The third map will be different—not just technical, but salvational.
THE SICKNESS RETURNS
This map is larger. More urgent. Lines radiating from a central contamination point to dozens of households.
It started six moon-cycles ago. Same pattern as before, but faster. Stronger. Children dying within two days. Elders following quickly. The flux, the fever, the hollow eyes.
The community panicked.
They tried everything they'd learned. Wenh's medicines—didn't help. Threyenh's fermented preparations—no effect. Yemotos's vessels for clean water storage—it didn't matter if the source was poisoned. Serepna's questions—"Are we doing this right? Are we missing something?"—but nobody had answers.
Fifty people sick. Then seventy. Then everyone who drew from the central cistern.
He marks the cistern on his map—a large square at the settlement's heart.
I knew immediately. Same pattern as before, just different location. Someone had dug a new waste pit. Somewhere upslope. And the contamination was traveling underground to the cistern.
But this time, I didn't just tell them. I was twenty-three now, not fifteen. I'd spent eight years becoming exactly what they'd named me. And I knew they wouldn't believe words.
So I showed them.
His voice gains strength, conviction.
I walked through the settlement mapping the sick families. Marked each household publicly, in full view. The pattern was obvious if you knew how to see—radiating out from the cistern, strongest closest, weakening with distance.
Then I followed the flies.
The settlement had grown. New buildings, new courtyards, new waste pits dug wherever people found space. One of them—hidden behind a large storehouse, where people dumped refuse because nobody wanted to walk further—was the source.
The flies showed me. Clouds of them, streaming between that hidden pit and the cistern, following the underground contamination path through air currents I couldn't see but they could.
I mapped their flight pattern. Found where they clustered strongest along the ground. And I did something no one expected.
I started digging.
He mimes the action—driving a spade into earth, lifting, tossing.
Right there. In the middle of the settlement. In front of everyone. I dug a trench from the hidden waste pit toward the cistern. Straight line. Three feet deep.
People gathered to watch. Thought I'd finally lost my mind. "Benbhubh has gone mad! He's tearing up the settlement!"
But I kept digging. One foot. Two feet. Three feet down.
And then I hit moisture. Not rainwater. Not clean groundwater. Contaminated seepage, flowing downslope through a layer of loose gravel toward the cistern.
I called everyone over. "Look. LOOK."
His voice breaks slightly—the memory of vindication mixed with grief for those who'd died.
You could see it. The contamination. Thick, dark water moving through gravel. Underground. Invisible from the surface. Exactly where I said it would be.
I traced the trench further. Twenty paces. Thirty. Forty. All the way to the cistern's foundation. The contaminated water was seeping into the bottom, mixing with clean water drawn from the deeper aquifer.
Everyone was silent.
Then Wenh spoke. My aunt, the first pattern-keeper, standing with her faded coat and ancient meteor stone.
"He sees what you cannot see. He has been trying to tell you for eight years. Are you ready to listen now?"
Benbhubh's voice steadies.
We had twelve people die before I could prove the connection. Twelve who might have lived if they'd listened eight years ago.
But the ones who were sick recovered. Once we sealed that contaminated pit, once we redirected waste far from all water sources, once we implemented the protocols I'd developed through years of testing—the sickness stopped.
I showed them everything. The brick-lined pits that prevent seepage. The minimum distances from water sources—fifty paces, minimum, more if the ground slopes toward water. The gravel drainage layers that control flow. The maintenance schedules so pits don't overflow.
And I told them: this work needs people. Not just me. Others who understand the invisible kingdom. Who can read the signs. Who can maintain the systems.
He stands, faces the full assembly.
They needed a name. These workers who would follow the path I'd found. These guardians of the invisible kingdom.
The Benbhubhen. The Followers of the Fly-Lord.
The name that was meant to mock me became the title they carried with pride. They wear it now—six workers trained in the protocols, maintaining the pits, watching the water, reading the flies.
And when children say "Benbhubh" now, they don't laugh. They say it with respect. The way they say "Wenh" or "Weiknos" or "Yemotos." A name for someone who sees patterns others miss.
The flies taught me clarity. They showed me chaos could be understood, confusion could be mapped, and the invisible kingdom could be made visible.
Not through grand innovations or beautiful colors or powerful questions. Through shit and flies and underground water and endless, patient observation of the things nobody wants to see.
He kneels again, draws one final mark—a simple glyph showing underground flow.
Someone must rule where no one wants to look. Someone must honor the invisible kingdom.
I am Benbhubh. And this is my gift to you: the knowledge that the most important patterns are the ones you cannot see. That's why infrastructure matters more than monuments. That's why the Benbhubhen will outlive us all.
Because everyone wants to build up. But I build down. And down is where survival lives.
THE WITNESSING
Silence held the cave for long moments. The only sound was the buzzing of flies, constant as breath.
Then Wenh rose. The ancient meteor-finder, now weathered by decades of pattern-work, walked to her nephew. She stood before him, studying his face—the premature lines around his eyes, the dirt permanently stained into his hands, the flies that never left him.
"I too was named what they feared," she said quietly. "Witch. Odd. Dangerous. Strange names for necessary work." She touched the flies on his shoulder without flinching. "Welcome, Benbhubh. The flies chose well."
Weiknos came next, moving with the careful economy of a man in his forties who still spoke more to goats than humans. He looked at Benbhubh with complete understanding—another outcast, another pattern-seer, another one who'd been mocked.
"They called me goat-walker," he said. "You, fly-lord. Strange names for necessary work." He clasped Benbhubh's shoulder. "But we know. The patterns choose us. We don't choose them."
Yemotos approached, teeth long gone, face weathered to leather, the eternal chuckle shaking his shoulders.
"Vessels," he said simply. "For water. For waste. For life. You understand." He gestured at the dirt diagrams. "Infrastructure is just vessels at scale. The ancestors knew. You remembered. That's the work."
Then Serepna stood. The uncomfortable child was now an uncomfortable woman, intensity undiminished by fourteen years.
"I must ask the question," she said. Not apologizing. Never apologizing.
Benbhubh nodded. He'd been waiting for this.
"Did the flies teach you?" Serepna asked. "Or did you teach yourself to see through them?"
He considered. "Both. I learned their language. They learned I was listening. We taught each other." He paused. "Like you and questions. Do the questions teach you? Or do you teach the questions what to ask?"
Serepna's eyes lit up—the recognition of pattern meeting pattern. "Both," she echoed. "Always both."
She touched his hand briefly. "You asked the right questions at twelve years old. You helped me understand what I was learning."
"You asked me questions when I was twelve," he corrected gently. "You helped me think."
"Both," she said again, and smiled.
The priest circle conferred briefly, then the eldest spoke:
"Magnanimity—you give the gift of clean water and proper waste management. You train the Benbhubhen to continue the work."
"Humility—you embraced the mockery name, accepted the flies as teachers, worked in the kingdom nobody wanted."
"Compassion—you felt the suffering of those who died, honored the knowledge of ancestors, served those who mocked you."
"Wisdom—you saw the invisible patterns, read nature's signs, understood that infrastructure serves life."
The elder held up the marking stone. "The pattern is recognized. Chaos became confusion became clarity. The invisible became visible. Benbhubh brought the underground kingdom to light."
He made the mark on the cave wall—the thirty-fifth notch in forty-two years. Beside it, a small glyph: lines flowing downward, then upward. What goes down must be honored if life is to rise.
"The pattern is sealed. The gift is given. The Benbhubhen will walk this path."
AFTER THE RITUAL
The tribes dispersed slowly, conversations buzzing like the flies themselves. Young people approached Benbhubh with questions about water, waste, underground flow. He answered each patiently, drawing diagrams in the dirt, showing flows with his hands.
Wenh watched from her seat by the dying fire. Weiknos joined her, as he often did after rituals.
"Your nephew," Weiknos said.
"My sister's son," Wenh agreed. "But yes. He has it. The pattern-sight."
"Harder path than yours."
"Different path. Mine was beautiful—meteors, lights, awe. His is necessary—shit, flies, survival." She touched her moldavite pendant. "Both matter. Both serve."
"The Benbhubhen," Weiknos said thoughtfully. "Followers of the Fly-Lord. A profession from a mockery name."
"Like you and the goats. Like Yemotos and the vessels. Like Serepna and the questions." Wenh smiled. "We all become what they name us. If we're brave enough."
Serepna approached, settling beside them without asking permission. She'd long since stopped asking.
"The Benbhubhen will become a class," she observed. "Separate. Marked. Necessary but apart."
"You see problems before they exist," Weiknos said mildly.
"That's her gift," Wenh said. "Pattern-drift before it happens." She looked at Serepna. "What do you see?"
"I see that in two generations, the Benbhubhen will be hereditary. In three, they'll be a caste. In four, they'll be untouchable—honored but separate." Serepna stared into the fire. "His gift will save people. And trap his descendants."
"All gifts do that," Yemotos said, appearing silently as he tended to. "My vessels freed people to store and carry. Now we're settling because vessels enable staying. Weiknos's goats freed us from hunting. Now we're trapped tending them. Your questions free people from pattern-drift. But soon they'll fear the questions, make them ritualized, safe."
"The trap closes," Wenh said softly. "With every innovation."
"But we mark the patterns," Serepna said. "We seal them on the walls. So future generations will know what was intended. What was preserved. What was lost."
They sat together, the old pattern-keepers, watching Benbhubh teach his first apprentice Benbhubhen how to read fly swarms and map underground water. The young man was patient, thorough, passing on knowledge that would outlive them all.
The flies circled like a blessing.
Or a warning.
Or both.
AFTERMATH
The Benbhubhen profession took root quickly. Within the first season, six workers were trained. Within a year, twelve. They wore the name with pride, even as others stepped carefully around them. Necessary. Honored. Apart.
The cesspits Benbhubh designed lasted generations. His protocols became law. His maps of underground water became sacred texts, preserved and updated by each new generation of Benbhubhen.
But Serepna's prediction proved true. By the time of the ninth gathering—twenty-one years hence—the Benbhubhen were a hereditary profession. Children followed fathers into the invisible kingdom. And slowly, imperceptibly, honor became distance. Respect became separation.
The most important work became someone else's work.
And the flies, always the flies, continued to teach those few who still knew how to listen.