Perusino interviews Chasca - The Goddess of the Dawn

Chasca at the bus stop: An interview with a bad mood and slow light

Morning hangs over the city like an indecisive blanket, and Chasca has apparently decided to work right here. The asphalt gleams coldly, streetlights burn out of habit, and the bus stop on the city's outskirts resembles a waiting room for people who have a falling out with the clock. A timetable is stuck behind glass, pretending that punctuality is a law of nature. The air smells of metal, a little of damp concrete, and very briefly of bread, because somewhere a delivery van drives past a bakery, carrying the scent with it like a provocation.

Perusino sits on the bench, shoulders hunched, backpack between his feet. His phone is dead, not dramatically dead, but completely numb. Silence remains, and in this moment, it is not a friendly silence. It is filled with attention, as if the world is holding its breath until it decides whether it truly wants to become bright.

A car roars past, far too fast for this time of day. A dog clicks its claws on the pavement somewhere, as if it has an appointment. Then nothing again. Just that gray in the sky, which doesn't look like clouds, but like a half-finished thought.

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Perusino: This is fraud. A day should simply begin. Lights on, done. Why is there even this in-between stage?

Suddenly, someone is sitting next to him. Chasca. No step, no creaking, no dramatic arrival. A seat that was just empty is now occupied, as if it should never have been empty. A figure with a calm posture, alert eyes, clothes that seem neither modern nor old, rather as if they were made precisely for transitions.

Dawn (Chasca): Early.

Perusino: Far too early. This isn't tomorrow. This is a mistake between two states.

A breath of wind pushes a piece of paper across the ground. The rustling sounds exaggeratedly loud in this silence, as if even trash now has an opinion.

Dawn: Transitions often feel like mistakes.

Perusino: Sentences like that sound like they're coming from adults. I bet he'll come up with some life wisdom next, and then someone will applaud.

Chasca's gaze sweeps upwards to the sky. There's no pathos in it, more of a scrutiny. The sky is minimally brighter, so little that the eyes seem to argue whether that even counts.

Perusino: Everyone says morning is important. Nobody likes it. Is that intentional?

Dawn: Necessity.

Perusino: That's not an answer, that's a sign without direction.

Dawn: Uncomfortable answers often act like signs.

Perusino snorts softly. A yawn comes, but it's not a contented yawn, more of an angry one, as if his body wanted to protest.

Perusino: The sun could easily take care of that. Just like that. Inti can do it. Why does it take so long?

Dawn: Inti arrives when everything is ready.

Perusino: And who decides that?

Dawn: Me.

The sentence is delivered without emphasis. That's precisely what makes it so disturbingly powerful. No threat, no boasting. Just a statement of fact.

Perusino: And what do you do all that time? Sitting around doesn't sound like world order.

Dawn: Separate.

Perusino: Separate what?

Dawn: Too early and too late. Dark and light. End and beginning.

A bird calls. One is enough. The call sounds like a first thin thread that binds the grayness in the sky to something that can be called day.

Perusino: Work that nobody sees. Great. Exactly my favorite genre.

Dawn: Invisible work holds many things together.

Perusino looks out at the road as if an explanation might drive by. The bus stop suddenly seems less like a place to wait and more like a place where something is being sorted out.

Perusino: One question, Chasca. If I hate this moment and simply skip it because sleep is better, will there be any kind of punishment?

Dawn: No penalty.

Perusino: Good. Then I can go back to sleep.

Dawn: The day begins anyway. Just without you.

The word is apt because it's not malicious. It contains objectivity, and objectivity is only annoying when it's true.

Perusino: Unfair.

Dawn: Freedom.

Another car drives by in the distance. A bus isn't visible yet, but a deep rumble announces its arrival somewhere, as if the city is slowly opening its eyes. The grayness shifts slightly. Contours become sharper. Houses regain their edges. The streetlights suddenly seem embarrassing because they're still on.

Perusino: And what if everyone always sleeps in? What if nobody notices this beginning?

Dawn: Then the days become louder. Faster. More impatient.

Perusino: Impatience sounds like me.

Dawn: Impatience leaps. Beginnings are built.

A brief moment of silence falls. Not an awkward one, but rather one that feels right. Perusino rubs his eyes, not just out of tiredness, but more out of defiance of the early hour.

Perusino: Surely being offended is a hobby of gods. Does it bother you when no one is watching?

Dawn: Observation is not an order.

Perusino: And what is the mission?

Dawn: Stability.

Chasca glances at him briefly. No glint, no threat. A matter-of-fact look, as if she were reading him like a weather report.

Perusino: So you're something like a buffer.

Dawn: A transition that lasts.

The bus finally appears. Interior lights, warm air, the promise of a normal time. The doors hiss later than it stops. The noise seems deafening because the world outside is still quiet.

Perusino stands up, slings his backpack over his shoulder, but pauses for a moment. The sky is noticeably brighter now, not beautiful in the cinematic sense, more honest. The light arrives without fireworks, but it arrives nonetheless.

Perusino: And now?

Dawn: That's enough for today.

The seat next to him appears empty in the next moment, without any visible movement. No surprising disappearance. A feeling remains, as if someone has untied a knot that one hadn't noticed before.

Boarding the bus is normal. Seats, a few sleepy faces, a jacket smelling of laundry detergent. Warmth slowly creeps back into my fingers. Outside, the bus stop flashes by, small and unremarkable. Nevertheless, the day feels less strange.

A beginning isn't automatically pleasant. A beginning has become recognizable. That's precisely the work of Chasca, even if no one applauds it and no one gets up extra early for it.

A bus window briefly shows a reflection, then only the road. A day continues, without applause or grand scene. Yet a beginning lingers, because it wasn't handed to us on a silver platter.

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Chasca, the goddess of dawn, represents the moment when nothing seems decided, yet everything is being prepared. Chasca is not a figure of the end result, but of transitions, in which order emerges before anyone notices it. Chasca's influence is not loud, but stabilizing, precisely where beginning and impatience meet.