There was a grain of salt on the floor.
I do not know how it got there. Perhaps it fell from the corner of my robe during morning purification. Perhaps the wind carried it in, though the room has no windows and the doors remain shut. I do not ask questions anymore. I observe. I breathe. I exist.
The chamber is small. Circular. Stone walls. One thin crack in the ceiling that lets in a shaft of light, though I do not rely on it to tell time. Time is irrelevant here. Time is a fiction. The monks say so, and I believe them.
I sit in the center of the circle. My knees ache. My back is a bowstring pulled too tight. I have not moved in seven hours. I am not allowed to move unless the Spirit permits it. The Spirit has been silent. Thus, I am still.
The Alpha King does not come.
He never comes.
But I am still bound to Him.
Not by oath. Not by touch. By something older. Something deeper. An invisible thread, like the ones in the Tapestry of Submission hung in the silent hall. I once touched it with my left hand. They made me fast for forty days to cleanse the arrogance from my fingertips.
I have not touched anything since.
There are no mirrors here. I do not know what I look like anymore. The last time I saw my face was the day I entered the Order of the Waiting Moon. I was fifteen. My hair was shaved. My tongue was silenced. My past was burned in a bowl of salt and ash.
We are taught to abandon all that is not waiting.
There are forty-seven ways to wait.
I have mastered twenty-two.
Each morning, we are served boiled root and sacred water. We are not allowed to ask where it comes from. Questions are sins. Wondering is a temptation. Knowledge is a distraction. To wonder is to disobey.
I once whispered the word "why" in the dark.
I was punished with a week of shadow fasting. No light. No words. Only silence and the sound of the wind screaming in the upper chambers, where the dead monks float.
I learned never to question again.
The Alpha King has a name, but I am not allowed to speak it. The monks say His name will shatter the soul of anyone unworthy. They say His howl was the first sound to echo through creation. Some believe He is not a man. Some believe He is a state of being.
I believe He is alone. That is why He has not come.
Perhaps He is sitting in a room like mine. Perhaps He, too, is staring at a grain of salt.
I do not need Him to speak to know that I am bound.
Sometimes I dream of teeth. Large, white, wet teeth. I hear the crunch of bones in the distance, followed by silence. I do not know if the teeth are His or mine.
The monks tell me dreams are distractions sent by the unworthy self. That pleasure is a form of rebellion. That longing is the first step toward destruction.
I write these words in my mind, not with my hand.
We are not allowed to write. Written words carry weight. They carry expectation. Only the holy are allowed to expect.
I expect nothing.
Except the moment He appears.
If He appears.
The silence is thick today. I count each breath.
One.
Two.
Three.
At seventy-four, I begin to feel my legs again.
At ninety-two, I begin to weep.
But I do not move. I have been told movement is for the unfaithful. I have not moved in seven hours and forty-three minutes. This is a good sign. Progress. Yesterday I broke at six hours and seventeen minutes. I was punished by being made to look at my reflection in a bowl of blood water.
I did not recognize the face. It looked like a traitor.
I believe the Alpha King is watching me. I cannot see Him, but I know He is there. Somewhere. In the silence between heartbeats. In the breath I forgot to take. In the space where names used to live.
I gave up my name to join the Order.
Now I am simply She Who Waits.
Or Sister. Sometimes they call me Sister.
Sister is a word with sharp edges. It is both binding and breaking.
Like the bond I share with Him.
I wonder what He looks like. But I am not allowed to wonder.
The Head Monk slapped me once for asking if the Alpha King had hair.
He told me I was impure.
I believe he was right.
Today, I will fast from thought.
There are seventy-nine types of fasting. Thought fasting is the hardest. I must let each idea rise and fall without engaging it. I must observe, not attach.
The Alpha King does not like attachment.
He is not a lover.
He is not a husband.
He is a presence. A field of gravity. A pressure on the soul.
I believe I loved Him once, in another life. But love is not allowed. I have learned this too many times to count. The scars on my knees remind me.
He is not to be loved.
He is to be served.
To be bound is not the same as to be wanted.
There was a girl once who said she wanted to run away. She whispered it to me during incense meditation. She said the silence was making her lose herself.
I do not remember her name.
They erased it.
They burned her books.
They scattered her ashes into the soil of the wolfgarden.
No one speaks of her now.
She is unbound.
I do not want to be unbound.
I do not want to be free.
Freedom is for the wild. I am not wild. I am obedient. I am the rope around my own ankles.
I have never seen a wolf. Not in person. But I have read of them.
Wait — I am not allowed to read.
I mean, I have dreamed of them.
A mistake. I will punish myself with breath-holding.
One… two… three…
Thirty seconds pass.
My chest burns.
I am closer to Him now.
They say He can smell disobedience through dimensions. That He walks in silence and breathes frost. That His touch burns and heals in equal measure. That He has never spoken a word — and yet the world trembles at the sound of His nothingness.
I long to be that nothingness.
I long to vanish beneath Him.
Not in passion.
In purpose.
The monks say desire is a sickness. That only when I am empty will He arrive to fill me. I have emptied myself a hundred times. I have poured out my thoughts into the silence and received nothing in return.
Still, I wait.
Still, I am bound.
Still, the salt remains on the floor.