The glowing red rose, coy, sweet, and heavy was the last thing Alex knew before the purple stone of the city rose up to swallow him in its embrace.
Then, the world shifted. The hardness of the street vanished, replaced by a warmth so total it felt like drowning in silk.
He was being held. Thick, powerful arms cradled his weight with a grace that made him feel as light as a feather. He could hear a heartbeat, a slow one.
Alex looked up, trying to find a face. The woman holding him was draped in fabrics that felt like midnight. He could see the curve of a jawline and the outline of a face, but her features were just a blur of shifting shadows.
How did he know she was a woman? He didn't. But he knew
Above them, a single, piercing light shone from somewhere high up. Because the light was directly behind her head, her face was a mask of absolute shadow, just a void where eyes and a mouth should have been.
Alex couldn't tell if he'd shrunk back into being a baby or if she was just a giant. Her lap felt like an entire continent, and her arms were like pillars of soft, dark stone.
Am I... am I truly dead now? Alex wondered.
"You are exactly where you were always meant to be," she answered.
The answer was too vague for Alex to understand where he was. Was he in heaven? Was he back home? Or was he in the torment pits?
Beyond the circle of her arms, the darkness wasn't empty. Alex squinted, his eyes heavy. In the deep gloom surrounding the woman's chair, he saw them. Thousands of small, pale shapes. They weren't moving. They were sat in neat rows, like dolls.
I should leave, Alex thought. But where? If he stood from this embrace, where would he go? Wouldn't it be better to stay here until he simply... ended? She didn't seem to mind.
"I don't," she answered.
He didn't even have to open his mouth. She was powerful, massive, and mysterious. Can you get me home? he thought.
"Can I send you back to your 'home'?" Her voice was a low vibration in his bones. "No. There was a time when I could, when the gates obeyed my breath and the stars knew my name. But not anymore."
The silk of her robes tightened around him, her embrace growing heavy.
"I cannot leave this prison, Alex. How then, can I help you escape yours? You seek a home in a world of mirrors, not realizing the glass is made of your own breath.
The true self is not the flame that burns, nor is it the wood that is consumed. It is the hunger that exists before the spark.
To achieve your goals, you must stop being the traveler and become the road itself. Only when the 'I' is stripped of its name can the shadow cast its own light"
Alex clutched at the silk of her robes and closed his eyes. "What goals?" he whispered. "I just wanted to be warm. I just wanted to be full. And... what if I don't want to abandon the 'I'? I lost my home. I lost my friends. The 'I' is all I have left. Why do you all want to take it from me?"
The woman went silent. She cupped her hands around him, lifting his small body toward the shadowed void of her face. For a long time, there was only the sound of that mountain-heartbeat. He could feel her staring.
"He was the first warmth I ever knew, He was clumsy, his hands uncertain, but he was alive, alive in a way none can ever be. I loved him, though the world says otherwise. I loved him because he was fragile, because he needed me,
She leaned closer, the darkness of her hood swallowing the light.
"I see you, Alex. You tremble as he did. You ache for warmth as he did.
You cling to your name as if a single syllable could anchor you against a hurricane.
You are small, mortal, breakable, and that is why you are beautiful.
You remind me of the him, the one I was torn from. You remind me of the children I cradled.
I do not want to take your 'I' to destroy you, little spark. I want to fold you into myself, as I once longed to fold him, as I once held my children.
In me, you would be nameless, and therefore unbreakable."
"My name is Alex," he said, his voice small but firm against the vast darkness of her hood. "And I don't want to be nameless. If I'm not dead yet, then I need you to wake me up. I have a debt to pay. I must meet someone, and I must go home today."
"You cling to your name as he did" she sighed "You clutch it like a wound, bleeding and proud. I do not despise your stubbornness, Alex. I adore it."
She leaned in, the void of her face pressing against his.
"But the Abyss adores it too, and it licks its teeth at the sound of your defiance."
She tried to speak again, but the only sound that came from her mouth was the knocking of a door. The space rippled, like raindrops falling on a river.
"Wake up.