Hello dear ones and welcome to today's story the demi urges city sophia was a weaver's daughter who had lived her whole life in the city of arkos and she believed as everyone in arkos believed that the city was the whole world arkos was not an unpleasant place it had markets and fountains and a great stone temple at its center in which the priests tended to an enormous fire that was said to be the source of all warmth and light the priests were important men they wore red robes and spoke with authority and told the citizens that if they gave their offerings at the temple fire they would prosper and that the fire was the highest power the creator of all things the only god there was sophia grew up making offerings at the fire she believed in it the way you believe in something you have never thought to question not with devotion or passion but with the unexamined certainty of habit the way you believe in the realness of your own hands when she was perhaps 25 or so she began to notice something it started with a dream or something that came in the hour of half sleep that is neither dream nor waking in this state she saw above the city of arkos above even the sky she had always taken for the ceiling of the world something she had no name for a light that was not the light of the temple fire the temple fire was orange and hot and could be felt on the skin this other light had no temperature it came from no direction it did not illuminate things the way fire does casting shadows and choosing what to reveal it illuminated everything simultaneously simultaneously from the inside as though each object it touched were lit from within rather than from without she woke in the cold dark of her room with tears on her face and an ache so sweet and terrible she pressed her hand to her chest to contain it she said nothing to anyone what would she have said over the following months she found herself watching the city differently she began to notice the way the temple priests controlled the fire who was allowed close who was turned away what offerings were required she noticed that the fire flickered and died down when the wind was wrong and had to be fed constantly with wood she found herself wondering whether a truly ultimate source of light and warmth would need quite so much maintenance she noticed too a restlessness in herself that the ordinary consolations of the city could not soothe good wine didn't touch it friendships helped but only got so close even the prayers she offered at the temple fire which had once given her a functional kind of comfort now left her feeling as though she had eaten a large meal that contained no nourishment she began asking questions carefully to people she trusted and discovered that she was not entirely alone there was a man named Philip who worked as a book binder and who when she sat with him one evening and finally said what she had been thinking looked at her with extraordinary attentiveness and said very quietly you have seen it too there were perhaps a dozen of them in Argos who had seen it or felt it or dreamed it they met in the back room of Philip's shop above the smell of leather and paste and they talked what they talked about was this that the fire in the temple was real but it was not ultimate it was a created thing powerful perhaps even necessary at a certain level but it was not the source behind it or rather above it in a way that had nothing to do with physical direction was the light Sophia had seen they called it different things the fullness,
The depth,
The true father,
The silence before speech none of the names were right they knew the names were not right and used them anyway the way you use a ladder you know is too short because it gets you closer than standing on the ground the priests they came to believe were not evil men or not most of them they were simply men who had inherited a partial truth and had institutionalized it and now they defended it because institutions once established have their own gravity the temple fire was real the error was claiming it was the whole of reality Sophia spent many years in this small community of seekers it was not a comfortable life they were regarded with suspicion by the temple authorities some of them were called before the priests and made to account for themselves Sophia herself was once publicly warned that she was placing her soul in danger she found,
To her own surprise,
That she was not afraid this was itself the most interesting discovery of her inner life that the fear she had always carried a low ambient fear she had never named a fear of doing wrong of being punished of the fire being withdrawn that fear had begun to dissolve a light she had glimpsed in that half-sleeping vision did not withhold itself it did not require offerings it could not be controlled by men in red robes it had no favourites and it had no enemies because it had no opposite she tried to explain this once to her sister who was a kind and sensible woman and looked at Sophia with love and concern in equal measure but without the fire,
Her sister said,
What would keep the dark away?
The dark,
Said Sophia,
Slowly trying to find the words the dark is what happens when you believe the fire is the highest thing and then the fire goes out but if you know that behind the fire there is something that cannot go out then the dark is just the dark it's just the night it's not the end her sister was quiet for a long time then she said how do you know there's something behind the fire?
I saw it,
Said Sophia,
Simply just once in a half-moment before waking but once was enough you don't un-know a thing like that Sophia lived to be old the city of Archos eventually fell to another city as cities do and its temple fire was extinguished many,
Many people found this catastrophic Sophia did not she sat in her house while the conqueror's banners went up over the walls and she felt the age she had felt her whole adult life sweet but uncontainable and she knew it for what it was not an absence to be filmed but a direction to be followed a compass needle a thread laid out in front of her in the dark by a hand she would never see in this life leading her home and she followed it quietly until there was no more no more road to follow you
