A man walks.
He remembers when the priest, all powerful, located the spirits of his dead wife.
A sacrifice to the Great Earth Mother, Xllith. Lit blood aflame. Spirits of blue, red, and shades of orange danced in the fringes of heat. The tent lied to the walking man and opened up to the night sky above. Smoke of hash and blood curdle the lasting impression of the stars like pinpricks in treated leather. Define it. Take it and make it simple. Two gold coins were melted down and given to the priest as payment.
The man shudders.
The gold was meant for his wife, for the man of the longboat and staff. The boatman who crosses.
Even now he steals from his wife. Take what was stolen and hand it to the priest. Make it simple. The priest lifts his arms and opens his mouth. Putrid, the smell drags itself through the smoke of hash and blood. The man does not gag, he lifts the melted gold, holding it with two fingers. Then it is gone. Laughing, the priest swallows the gold and takes the man’s hands.
The man wants a drink.
A depressive to dull his sharpened knife.
Contact. His body turns to bold water drum. The priest looks into his eyes and he is hit. From the inside his heart hammers into his soul and he travels fast, like sound in water. The priest is gone. Two edges of light and a depth so low it’s a substance. It’s color so void he reaches out and handles it like molten rock, but it is cold to the touch.
The man walks through a door.
A bell rings for his entrance. A warning to those inside, for they are no longer alone.
Was it the straightest line he had ever seen? He thinks in a space smaller than an atom yet larger than a time. There is only light because I am here to see it. The man closes his eyes. The substance folds over him layer after layer, times and times again. He does not need to breath, but time is cold. Lost and cold. So much is poured over him, the mind is torn from the soul and he drifts off unable to feel anything but the cold of time. His mind wanders, it is necessary, it wanders from the beginning of everything, it touches everything. Fumbling for what he wants to feel once more.
Contact. A warmth. Faster than imagination the cold is replaced with heat and he knows he has found her. He remembers the feeling, the warmth of absent time.
The man drinks. He thinks of his wife and the first time she touched him. The heat of time stood still. No, it did not stand still. They were able to grind it to a slow creeping pace. When they were together for that first time it was as if the man and his wife were breaks pressed on the wheel that turns time.
And in the void it was the same. The heat of time stood still. That is what he remembered and that is how he knew it was her he hand found.