...







-- LIGHT --

It's not the labyrinth. It's just a house like any other.

Carpeted floor, upholstered furniture, curtained windows -- it's a perfectly ordinary living room. A living room; a room for living in.

The door they've just stumbled through is gone.

Where is the dwelling place of light?
And where is the house of darkness?
Time passes. How much, it's impossible to say.
Go about; walk the limits of the land.
Turns reveal more of the same: more corridors, more corners. Doors begin to appear with less regularity, then stop altogether.

                                      ins to rise, but only briefly before it 
                                    g                                                    f
                                  e                                                        a
                                b                                                             l
A few times, the floor                                                                  ls again, and
                                                                                                             keeps
                                                                                                                   falling.

It's getting colder.
The walls burn when bare skin touches them.

 
Do you know a path between them?

 

It could be as long as days before the corridor ends at a single door, as nondescript as everything else in this house.




It's unlocked.

(Let there be




It's the light that hits first.

It's the warmth second.

It's like staring into the sun, like standing right next to a furnace cranked up to full blast. It wouldn't be, though, if they hadn't come straight from the labyrinthine folds of the house.

Because where they've ended up is all normal. It's just a house like any other. Couches, carpeting, curtains, windows: anyone could live here.

Here, there is no light.

Here, there is no color to the walls or floor: just a uniform, ashy black.

Here, there is nothing -- no proof of what has come before, no prediction of what may come after.

There's only the darkness, the cold, and the long hallway stretching ahead.

Here, there is no light.

Here, there is no color to the walls or floor: just a uniform, ashy black.

Here, there is nothing -- no proof of what has come before, no prediction of what may come after.

There's only the darkness, the cold, and the long hallway stretching ahead.

Here, there is no light.

Here, there is no color to the walls or floor: just a uniform, ashy black.

Here, there is nothing -- no proof of what has come before, no prediction of what may come after.

There's only the darkness, the cold, and the long hallway stretching ahead.

Here, there is no light.

Here, there is no color to the walls or floor: just a uniform, ashy black.

Here, there is nothing -- no proof of what has come before, no prediction of what may come after.

There's only the darkness, the cold, and the long hallway stretching ahead.

Here, there is no light.

Here, there is no color to the walls or floor: just a uniform, ashy black.

Here, there is nothing -- no proof of what has come before, no prediction of what may come after.

There's only the darkness, the cold, and the long hallway stretching ahead.

unseelie does not rattle tables and chairs, or hurl things down so they break
It's another hallway. There are doors branching off from this one on either side, spaced at regular intervals.
instead it arranges things you’ve thrown away to a pattern that you can’t escape
And there's no end in sight.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

unseelie’s no dark boulevard of black trees with branches that crackle and stir
Ahead, there's something new: a yawning hole in the middle of the floor, hundreds of feet across.
but a path that leads ’round to the place where it started, which isn’t the place that you were
 
      It's  a  staircase,
                             winding

                                     tighter
                  ible  sin
             invis         gu            and
          tant               lar
       dis                     ity          tighter
      some                far
                       below.             around
      reaches
                                         itself
          it
               until              like
                       a shell