The Taste of Red

Dearest Mary,

You were right, I should not have come.

I confess, the labyrinth’s outer reaches do not provide the excitement I had anticipated.

Our days are drudgery. We trace and map the walls, try to measure the open spaces using sonar, but each new passage contains no more adventure than the last. The caverns, with their eerie silence, are worse. The lonely clicking of a few conscripted explorers does little to battle the silence. 

Even the dangers of hazards such as pits or rockfall, become mundane. Background concern to the true enemy of my days.

Boredom.

The recruiters lied. There is nothing new out here to discover. Occasional unexplained sounds wind through the corridors, but it’s taken me only a few weeks of duty to understand these are more likely to be wind than strange creatures. More likely to be figments of imagination than anything new. 

Signing my year’s commitment to the Explorers was a mistake. Whatever advantage this experience grants you and I in our future cannot possibly be worth the time with you which I am missing.

It’s all lies out here. There is nothing beyond the home caverns. Not just no monsters, I believe there are no people, nothing new to discover. 

No, I’m wrong. I do have two new companions. The wind of the tunnels and the silence. I think I was not made for this silence. I miss the constant clicks and voices of a hundred people in our home cavern, painting the space with sonar and sound. 

I miss the way your voice bounces off the walls and floors just so. I miss the feel of you.

I miss the taste of real food. Fresh, steamed in the vents of the home caverns.

The rations of the exploring parties may be adequate sustenance, but while mycelium bars may fill my belly, they leave a hole in my heart which will only be filled when I once again consume good food among good company. 

Tomorrow we set course for a section where my fellow Explorers claim strange sounds have been emanating. I think they’re just trying to scare the new fellow. I will do my best to play along and be one of the lads.

My only consolation is the time I am afforded to write to you, and read your messages. As I thread knot after knot into the message chord, I imagine your fingers passing over each one to consume my words. As I read the chord you have sent me, I imagine your fingers crafting each word.

I count the days until I am back in your arms. Eleven months and thirteen days.

With all my love,

Thomas 

—

Dearest Mary,

Something wonderful has occurred. 

I know I have written about the boredom, even despair of being out here in the wilds of the labyrinth. But what has occurred today must surely be a miracle. The priests of old would be moved by what I have seen today. 

I hardly know where to begin, for the words to describe what I have seen feel clumsy and insufficient. Yet, I will try, for you must know. You will hear and experience some of it soon enough, but I cannot keep this to myself.

You must understand the wonder that has come upon us here at the edge of the labyrinth.

Yesterday, our exploration party ventured as far as any have dared. We encountered strangers, Mary! Not people from another outpost, nor even explorers like ourselves, but true strangers. They came to us in a cavern out of silence. Not along the walls, but out of open space, without using sonar.

Impossible! I can hear you thinking it. How ever did they navigate? What they brought with them, Mary, was the most astonishing thing of all.

They brought something they call light. Light is incredible. It reveals the world with unparalleled clarity. 

Imagine being in a large cavern, alone, without walls for succour, desperately relying on your own sonar clicks to try and find your way to safety. Then imagine a hundred friends, from every direction joining you, filling the air with sound and perception. 

My poor descriptions cannot do it justice. With a thousand people, the world would not be as clear. With ten thousand, a hundred thousand!

Imagine being deaf, and waking up suddenly able to hear.

Yes, a sense unbound. That’s what it was like.

They carried it with them, as casually as we carry our tools, “illuminating” everything around them. Walls, objects, even faces. Everything transforms under this mysterious radiance. I confess I was struck dumb, unable to speak as I witnessed it.

Mary, we discovered colour, and it is unlike anything I have ever experienced.

How can I begin to describe colour? I have learned that my sleeve is “blue”, my hair is “brown”, the meat of our rations is “red”. Light reveals details on surfaces that even a perfectly angled sonar click cannot. When we bathe surfaces in light instead of sound, it’s like those surfaces sing back to us, in complex, gorgeous harmonies. 

The sight filled me with joy and made my heart beat faster.

I cannot wait to see your face, Mary, painted in light. 

It is unlike anything our scholars, or even our priests have ever described. 

Mary, if I was despondent before, now I am brimming with excitement. This light, it will change our cavern, our society, our world. The strangers claim they can teach us to harness this light, to bring it into our caverns.

Even the way they communicate is different. Instead of writing by tying knots in a chord, they create elaborate “images” of “black” and “white”. These “images” represent words! Can you imagine it, Mary?

There is so much more I wish to tell you, but the hour grows late. I am among those to meet with the strangers again tomorrow. They have promised to show us how they create and control this light. We will learn all we can and bring the knowledge back. Our lives will change as we illuminate our world.

Stay well, my dearest. Soon, I hope you will see what I have seen, and we will marvel at this miracle together.

Forever yours, 

Thomas

—

Dearest Mary,

Thank you for your letter, your vivid tales of home are balm for my heart. They keep me connected to you, and to the world we knew before this age of miracles.

Your story of old Griff’s journey to the well moved me deeply. To think he could make the trip without needing to touch the wall! But even more astonishing is your description of seeing the tears in his eyes, something none of us could have ever imagined. He may have not needed to touch the wall, instead his emotion has touched my heart.

The changes light has brought to our lives seem boundless. Fewer injuries, safer movement. These would be blessings enough, but to hear of doctors working with such precision, seeing clearly what they are treating, feels like a gift from the gods. 

I struggle to credit how the priesthood can rail so vehemently against this discovery, label it as sin. How can they not see its wonders? The gods, silent for so long, have surely blessed us with this gift.

Here, too, our work has transformed. No longer are we blindly avoiding the open spaces of the labyrinth. Now we map them with purpose. The resources we’ve uncovered! Fields of mushrooms, veins of metal, and deposits of coal, all waiting to be claimed.

Admittedly, hunting has grown more challenging. The light aids our prey as much as it does us. Yet, we adapt. The labyrinth feels alive in ways we never understood before, and even with its dangers, it is an exhilarating place to be.

Your description of “paintings” fascinates me. Using colour as a form of decoration? A form of expression, like singing or drumming? It’s an idea I can scarcely grasp. I cannot wait to see the vibrancy you describe, the way it must breathe life into our homes and caverns.

And these games you’ve written of! We’ve created something similar here. At day’s end, we gather in a circle and share the new colors we’ve discovered. Each shade feels like a revelation. I find myself drawn most to the reds, they stir something primal in me, a reminder of strength and vitality.

But your games with hundreds of participants, with days-long experiences sound incredible. The sheer scale of it must be awe-inspiring. What I wouldn’t give to see it with my own eyes.

I count the seven months remaining until I will return home and witness all this for myself. How much more will have changed by then? I long for the day I see you again, Mary, to taste the redness of your lips and marvel at this new world, together.

Though my work here is fulfilling, I miss you more than words can convey. Please, continue to write of the changes unfolding, so that I may return to you not as a strange barbarian, out of touch with the modern world, but as a man who has kept pace with the transformation of our world.

I reread your letters daily, they are my anchor.

Take care, my dearest. 

All my love,

Thomas

—

Dearest Mary,

Do you think they knew what they were doing to us, these strangers?

I read with sorrow of the home caverns’ colour addicts. Even here, on the boundary, we have had our own struggles with similar problems. Perhaps it is human nature. When we find something that makes us feel good, some of us will struggle to identify the line between good and enough.

Here, people paint a colour of their preference on a wall. They proceed to sit in front of it, a hood over their heads, returning themselves to the dark. Once their eyes accustom themselves to nothing but the black, they whip the hood away, flooding their eyes with their favourite hue.

The strangers say it’s because generations in the dark have atrophied our eyes. They say we have become “super sensitive” to “visual stimulus”.  They say they are sorry.

I wonder if I believe them.

Your tales of the home caverns are troubling. Entire rooms painted in vivid colours, lights flickering on and off, people losing themselves for days at a time. If some here heard such tales, I worry they might take them as inspiration rather than warning.

And yet, what frightens me more is the rise of the old religion in response. I am heartened to know there are those working to help the afflicted, but to frame this as a punishment only the gods can resolve? It feels too convenient. I worry the cure will be worse than the disease.

Surely, the answer cannot be to remove all of this light from our lives? What about old Griff? What about the paintings?

In your letter, you tell me your hair is red. I do not feel it can be wrong for me to dream of seeing it. To hold you close, and bury my face in your hair, see, smell, even taste the colour red.

There must be some middle ground. Where we learn to use the light in a way which doesn’t “over stimulate” us. To balance light’s gifts against the dangers.

Mary, I do feel we should keep watch on the strangers. But the priests go too far.

In retrospect, the gift of light was too good to be true. Too much to give for nothing. Now it turns out not only is there a price, it is a high one. Yet it’s not them we have paid it to. What do they want?

I worry that those who listen to the priests will resort to violence, and I worry about what that may mean for all of us.

Out here in the reaches of the Labyrinth may once have been an outpost of exploration, it now feels more like a boundary. Not just the edge of the map, the line between us and them.

Take care of yourself my love. Be careful. Five more months.

All my love,

Thomas

—

Dearest Mary,

I have made the most wonderful discovery.

Red, it is everything!

You see, Mary, I had only been skimming the surface of possibilities. As incredible as light and colour seemed, it was only once I truly saw the purity of red that I understood. Red is the answer!

The hood Mary, you must try it. Be careful of course, you don’t want to become like the addicts, lost in their colour dreams, completely unable to function. But the line between a tool being useful and dangerous isn’t binary.

The steam from the vents that cooks our food can burn us horribly. Yet we do not forsake all heat for fear of a few burns.

I begin my day and end my day in contemplation. Red, Mary, it makes my heart beat faster. Blue is serene, and green, green is intriguing, but red, red is alive! I feel the beating heart of our people, striving for progress! This light, these colours, these they hold more potential for us than I had ever imagined.

And if from time to time, I indulge further throughout my day, it harms nobody for me to experience the joy and freedom of colour.

The priests are wrong, Mary, this is no sin. This great gift can only have come from the gods.

And these strangers who have given it to us. We must embrace them as brothers. If they cannot feel the pure joy of red as I do, our duty is to show them our gratitude by teaching them. Mary, we must show them how colour, which they see as a mundane tool, can elevate life to be truly wondrous.

And if light is a simple tool to them, what other wonders must they have to share?

Mary, heed not the warmongering of the priests. These strangers are not our enemies. They are our friends, our benefactors.

I have a dream, Mary, where you and I sit in a tent together. We extinguish all lights, and create a perfect void. Then once we are one with the void, with the sound of each other's breath, as we began, we illuminate a single light. I will drink in the red of your hair.

It will be perfect.

I miss you Mary.

Take care my love, only three months left now.

Love,

Thomas

—

Dearest Mary,

Thank you for your last letter. Thank you for telling me what I needed to hear. You’re right, I was clearly on a slippery slope.

I have found peace now. With the help of the ministers of the gods, I have understood and accepted the purity of the dark. I will not stray again.

I see clearly now. The temptation of the colours is simply too much for us to bear. The coming of the strangers was the coming of devils to tempt us. Yet even this is the will of the gods. For with light, came shadow, and in the shadow, there is peace.

The gods sent the strangers to show us the need for purity. We had already strayed. By showing us light, they also show us the peaceful calm of dark. We have returned to their embrace, and now we must demonstrate our love.

We must eradicate the strangers.

Mary, the peace I feel now surpasses even the fiery passion ignited in my soul by colours. They consumed me, night and day. Now I am free.

My only sorrow as I forsake colour is I will never see the red of your hair. I accept though, it is for the best. With that sacrifice, you and I demonstrate our devotion to the shadow.

I will be honest with you, Mary. I am afraid. I trust the gods, and yet still, I am afraid. I fear that I may never return home, for who knows what other tricks these strangers have to use against us as we march to purify the labyrinth?

Surely the gods will not be so cruel as to allow me to fall without seeing you one final time.

Be brave Mary, and believe that the gods will protect us.

I will return to you once their work is done.

Your ever loving husband in the dark,

Thomas