The Woman in the Tower
Prologue
A persistent knocking on the door broke her reverie. At first, she dismissed it as an echo of her tumultuous thoughts. But as the sound grew more insistent, morphing into an urgent pounding, a fragment of wisdom crossed her mind, a piece of insight she wanted to immortalize in her chronicle: A world’s history is a triptych, always divided into three acts — The Risen, The Lingering, and the Fall.
Reluctantly, she opened the door, her calm sky-blue eyes meeting the anxious gaze of a man, who, in her heart, would forever be the boy she had once loved. His words came out in a rush, a chilling confirmation of her worst fears. The Burning Way had assumed control, usurping religion, government, and authority. Their destructive path was charting towards Silent City, promising to turn their oasis into a wasteland of excess under the oppressive shadow of the Firedom. Their arrival was imminent, within a month, according to his predictions.
His question hung in the air between them, fraught with fear and anticipation. Was she going to fight? Her answer was a shake of her head, her resolve steely. “I’m going to write,” she replied. Her mission was clear. “People must know the beginning because they will never know its end.”
A faint smile touched her lips, pleased with the cadence of her words. Her tower, her sanctuary, was to become a cradle of knowledge, a beacon of light in the impending darkness. The triptych history was incomplete. The narrative was still being written, and she would ensure the past was not forgotten, even if the future remained uncertain. With a final word, she turned from the man and moved towards her desk, “For now.”
The man trailed behind her, as he always had, and always will. He marveled at her inner strength, a quality that had once lain dormant but had blossomed with time. I remember when you use to lean on me… such a frightened little girl. Now look at her, he reflected. A shroud of dark mist hung on her form. It was a sight only a few could see, only those who had been schooled in its perception. But he could see it. He recollected the moment he had first informed her of the peculiar aura surrounding her, clinging to her like a second shadow. But there was light too, a radiance that didn’t behave as light ordinarily should. The shadow cloaks her physical form, but her mind is a beacon of blinding brilliance.
“Are you contemplating me again,” she asked, her voice adopting the familiar cadence that took them back to their shared childhood.
“And what if I am?” he countered, though he was never any good at these playful exchanges.
“Please, always do,” she replied, her voice a blend of melancholy and joy. “Tell me,” she coaxed him, taking his silence as a sign of acquiescence.
The man, her guiding star amidst the engulfing chaos, bore tales of yet another city succumbing to the corrosive influence of the shadow and the brutal authority of the Firedom. The formidable iron crematoriums, those monstrous dark engines of their dominion, vomited ash into the skies wherever they rolled, veiling the world beneath a funeral pall. Public punishment became grim spectacles, lessons in obedience painted in cruel strokes of fire and pain.
“I apologize,” he said, a note of regret for the hardened edge that his voice adopted each time he reported on the horrors of the Burning Way.
“I understand,” she responded, keeping her back towards him as she approached her chair cushioned in black. As her gaze drifted over the line of xeno-scrolls lying next to a neatly positioned light stylus on the stone desk, she allowed her mind to reflect.
The woman, from her towered sanctuary, bore witness to these events from afar. Her heart was heavy with the dissolution of the old order, the crumbling pillars of law and order that had once anchored society. Their fall had left an emptiness behind, a void, and into it rushed the Burning Way. The dystopian faith of fire didn’t merely fill the vacuum; it consumed it, propagated itself within it, a relentless, unyielding force controlled by hidden powers.
Not so hidden anymore, she thought.
The once-vaunted hierarchies of justice and civil obedience, the cornerstones of their world, were eradicated, supplanted by a depraved ideology that coerced loyalty through a twisted exchange system, trading pleasure for torment. A method to make a society consume itself. Despite the bleakness, the woman could not ignore the perverse brilliance of it. She traced the marks of this swift, brutal transformation with a mournful gaze, each report the man delivered sounding the death knell for another fragment of the world they had once known.
Marks. The woman carried her own from her childhood. She rejected the man’s offer to erase them with his healing abilities as a metta adept. “The past is burned onto my body and mind by them,” she once told him, “But how I read that story is my own prerogative.”
She listened to the soft footsteps of the man as he prepared to leave. “Would you stay to hear the first few pages?” she called out.
“No,” came his response. “I may influence you. It is your story to tell.”
“But it’s ours too,” she countered, her voice dipping back into the tones of her younger self.
“Do you fear revisiting your past?” he questioned, his deep understanding of her prompting him. “I thought, since your mind’s transformation, you no longer fear like the rest of us.”
“I experience it more intensely, in layers, hues, and flavors that you cannot even fathom,” she replied, taking him to an emotional plane he could not traverse.
She always found fear to be an odd, intricately woven tapestry of falsified realities that endlessly proliferated within one’s mind. Each fear spun out its own distorted world, a nightmarish mirage that rarely served the one trapped within its confines. It was akin to a cognitive virus, subtly alerting one’s perception until the world outside becomes a reflection of the horror within. It had a peculiar talent of amplifying the worst, disregarding the best, and obscuring the possibilities that lay in between.
But since her transformation, she had become an ardent observer of this parasite of the mind. She no longer feared fear. Instead, she studied its patterns, its habits, and its tricks. It was an intricate dance of shadows and illusions, and she had learned to recognize the falsehoods it spun. She could see the fear within her for what it was: not a truth but a contortion of it.
She had found her way to the center of her fear, the eye of this tumultuous storm, where she could observe its machinations with detachment. She could see its layers peel back to reveal their baseless core, the hollowness at the heart of each of its fabrications. And from this place of understanding, she could laugh.
The woman chuckled at the parade of fictitious scenarios fear wove around her, the nonsensical narratives designed to keep her tethered. They no longer held any power over her. She had risen beyond their reach, out of the murky waters of manipulated perceptions, and into the crisp clarity of truth. Her laughter was a melodious defiance against the tyranny of fear, an affirmation of her reclaimed sovereignty. She knew the fabrications were not of her, but rather, imposters, trespassers in the tranquil realm of her mind. Fear had lost its grip on her, and she reveled in her newfound freedom.
“But also love,” she added, softening the blow.
“Who is the intended recipient?” the man questioned, genuine curiosity coloring his tone.
“All of them. Every iteration of Earth across every parallel,” she responded, a somber note in her voice. “Each individual deserves the chance to understand what has been, what is transpiring, and what may yet come.”
A moment passed as he digested her words. “You once told me that dreams were the refuge of the spiritually poor,” he reminded her softly. It was a gentle prod, a plea for her to remember her roots, their shared past. She didn’t correct him. She understood what he was truly trying to convey. He longed for the past, for the way they used to be when their youth granted them the luxury of reckless abandon, of facing the world together as if they were invincible. Us, she reflected, her heart aching for him. We are still us… but the circumstances have shifted. I have shifted. Everything had changed.
He sounded unusually vulnerable as he made his next plea. “Don’t weave it into a sad tale.”
The woman turned to face him, a playful smirk tugging at her lips. A smirk he had been at the receiving end of countless times. “It will be a tale unlike any you have read before.”
The man’s reaction was barely perceptible, a slight pursing of his lips that shaped his typically teasing smile into a flat line. It was a rare sight, seeing him attempt to disguise his emotions. His eyes, however, sparked brightly, a silent admission of his agreement. He took one last lingering look at her, the sight of her determined expression imprinted onto his memory before he turned on his heel and left the room. The sound of his retreating footsteps echoed through the silent chamber, a subtle reminder of the solitude that would be her constant companion henceforth.
The woman remained rooted to her spot, soaking in the tranquility of her sanctuary, before she finally moved. With deliberate slowness, she pulled back the chair, the scraping sound it made against the smooth rose-colored stone flooring filling the room. She savored the dissonant sound, a stark contrast to the usual serene silence of her space.
Sitting down with a sigh of anticipation, she unfurled the first of the many xeno-scrolls spread out in front of her. The soft golden glow of its mesh screen lit up her face, highlighting the determined gleam in her sky-blue eyes. She slotted the scroll securely into its stand, its luminescent sheen washing over her desk. Her heart pounded with anticipation, a symphony of emotions surging within her.
With a steady hand, she picked up the light stylus, its bright tip gleaming under the ambient light. Her grip on it was firm, the instrument an extension of her thoughts. And then, finally, the moment came. With the precision of a seasoned scribe, she pressed the tip onto the mesh screen, her movements fluid, confident. The short, softly shaped letters that formed took on an ethereal glow against the golden backdrop, the beginning of a story that was waiting to be told. Her first words, simple yet profound, appeared on the screen:
I tell you this story to liberate you from your own.
The beginning of the end was now in motion.
Thanks
I appreciate you spending your precious time to be a quest in my mind. Your contribution sparks my contribution. If you like to continue this journey, feel free to delve into my other contemplations from here on Medium.
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See you on the road, traveler.
