The Labyrinth
I
The movement
The Heat
When I woke, the sun sat high and there was only sand.
The sand isn't golden. It is pale and ashy, like bone bleached by centuries of sun. White. Vast. Without edges.
The heat rose from the earth like a heavy breath, pressing against my bare soles. I stood. Small. The only dark in all that white.
The silence isn't empty. It listens. The whole landscape is listening.
A single red ribbon lay paces away, half-buried in the dust. Everything else too bright to look at; the ribbon the only place to rest.
I stepped forward, the dust rippling like a muscle beneath my feet. My fingers touched the silk—cold, colder than the bone-white air. I pulled it from the sand and a low vibration hummed through my wrist.
In the distance—or perhaps not distance, but simply elsewhere—a single wooden column stood against the white.
My eyes closed. Opened. The column had become a doorway. No walls. Just two black posts and the dark space between.
Within: a presence cut out of the light.
I did not move. It did not move.
The silence between us filled. As something spoken in a language long forgotten.
The ribbon colder still. The vibration in my wrist stopped.
I took a step forward. The figure did not step back. I took another. The shadow did not waver.
The hand lifted. Slow. The palm turned, empty.
I stopped.
The hand lowered.
Simply there. Has always been. Will always be.
I did not know what it wanted. I did not know what I wanted.
But I knew I was seen.
","author_name":"Friedrich Gatzen"}