The garden's dissolution left a faint perfume in the void—vanilla laced with the sharp tang of unwritten endings—and I found myself adrift once more, the admirers' echo still tingling like static on my skin. Patience, they'd said. As if eternity came with a timetable. I, Ojas, who had once spun the multiverse from a yawn, now chafed at the bit of my own intrigue. Philosophical irony: the weaver, tangled in his loom.
Ahead loomed not a thread, but a tapestry—a vast, half-woven expanse suspended in the black, its edges fraying into questions. Warps of silver possibility intersected with wefts of crimson consequence, forming patterns that hinted at destinies: a lover's knot here, a noose of neglect there. I approached, fingers tracing the loom's invisible frame. The air hummed, threads vibrating like harp strings tuned to the universe's secret frequency. Touch one, and you'd feel the weight of worlds unborn; pluck another, and echoes of alternate lives would chorus in your ears.
I selected a silver warp, slender as hope, and tugged. The tapestry shifted, revealing a panel: a mortal city at dusk, spires of glass and bone piercing a sky bruised purple. In its streets, souls hurried—lovers linking arms against the chill, philosophers arguing over street-vendor falafel about the soul's geometry. One figure paused under a lamppost, glancing up as if sensing my gaze. A woman? Man? Blurred at the edges, but the thud in my chest said familiar. Lub-dub. She—they—smiled, a curve that promised debates till dawn and dances till collapse. Then the panel flickered: the city aflame, not in ruin, but rebirth, flames licking spires into new shapes, the figure laughing amid the blaze.
"Tease back," I whispered, weaving a crimson weft into the mix. The panel responded, blooming into comedy: the philosopher slipped on a banana peel conjured from my whim, tumbling into the lover's arms. They caught, spun, waltzed through the inferno as if it were a ballroom. Romance's jest: fire as foreplay, destruction as duet. The thud echoed, approving, lub-dub-lub-dub, syncing with the waltz's rhythm.
Deeper into the tapestry I delved, gloved hands pulling threads like a surgeon dissecting fate. Another panel: a library infinite as the void, shelves groaning under tomes of every what if. I browsed, dust motes swirling like tiny galaxies. One book fell open: The Admirer's Codex. Pages fluttered—sketches of thrones carved from comet-ice, pyres stacked with phoenix feathers. Scribbled margins: He'll laugh at the first. Burn the second? Only if he asks nicely. My pulse raced, god-speed, a philosophical quandary unfolding: Are we authors of our affections, or do the threads pull us? If love is woven, who holds the shuttle?
I closed the book, but it lingered, pages whispering marginalia into the air. The void grew textured now, threads snagging on my form like insistent lovers. I wove onward, medium-paced, savoring the pull. A crimson knot yielded a memory-veil: young Ojas, threading his first star, pricking his finger on infinity's needle. Blood—divine ichor—dropped, birthing a nebula that wept rubies. "Pain in creation," the echo of my younger self chuckled. "But oh, the shine."
The thuds grew playful, weaving their own strands into the tapestry—subtle flourishes of violet and gold, hinting at gardens yet to grow, dances yet to spark. No faces, no forms, just presence, flirtatious as a brush of wind. I laughed, the sound unraveling a loose thread into a cascade of firework-petals. Comedy in the cosmos: gods gossiping with ghosts.
As the tapestry thinned, revealing the weave's reverse—tangled, beautiful chaos—I stepped back. The structure held, a monument to mischief. Immersion's gift: to touch the threads is to become them. I glided free, the admirers' lilt fading to a hum. Patience, yes. But the weave called me forward, promising patterns yet to knot.