The Labyrinth - 12 Smoke - Part 1

Smoke Part 1 The thread pulled. Not gently. A sharp tug. As if the next voice could not wait. As if what it carried had been pressing against the silk for too long. The white faded. The cold of the figure's forehead dissolved. Smoke. Thick. Sweet. Bitter underneath. The smell of something burning that was not wood. Something that made the air heavy. Something that climbed into the lungs and stayed. The floor was stone. Cold beneath my knees. I was kneeling. I could feel the rough surface through the thin cloth that covered my legs. A tripod. Bronze. Beneath me. My weight pressing it into the stone. The metal warm from a fire I could not see. Darkness. I did not know who I was. That was the first thing. Not fear. Not confusion. Just absence. I was a body kneeling on a tripod in a dark room, and I did not have a name. The smoke curled up from a crack in the floor. It entered me with each breath. It did not choke. It opened. Like a door inside the chest that I did not know was there. Something stirred. Not in the room. In me. Behind the door the smoke had opened. Something was moving through me. Taking shape. Finding my throat. And then I saw it. The thread. Red silk. But more than silk. The same thread that had led me here. The same thread that pulsed against my wrists. But seen from inside. Seen as what it was. Not a ribbon. Not a path. The thread that runs through everything. Through the stone beneath my knees. Through the bronze of the tripod. Through the smoke that filled my lungs. I followed it with eyes that were not my eyes. It led forward. Through a doorway in the darkness. Two posts. Black against black. To a figure standing at the threshold. Not a man. Not a god. Something else. Something that held the thread without touching it. Something that had been there before this temple was built and would be there after it crumbled to dust.