Anthesis of Sadness

I had continued the climb, tirelessly, until the steps ceased. Until a landing appeared—bare, silent, with no step above. Like a pause the world itself offered me. Or maybe... a limit. A threshold. Something else began there. I felt it, without yet knowing what.

Suspended in the fog, a shape floated. It wasn’t a room, nor a human construction. It was a cocoon. A living shelter, organic, as if woven by something older than the world.

It seemed made of misty fibers and interlaced roots, thick and translucent at the same time, as if even the light hesitated to pass through them. Its surface rippled slowly, animated by a discreet, almost imperceptible breath—a calm, irregular beating, like that of a heart no longer beating to survive, but to remember.

The cocoon rested on nothing. It floated, suspended by invisible filaments, anchored somewhere between emptiness and memory.

Its skin, veined with pale glows, vibrated faintly under the layers of mist, as if it responded to my presence without defending itself.

The opening at the front wasn’t a door but a living, pulsing slit that breathed slowly. Like a memory one doesn’t dare to name. Like an old wound waiting to be looked at without trembling.

The silence around was not dead—it was sacred. Everything seemed to hold its breath, as if this cocoon sheltered something even the world didn’t dare disturb.

I approached. One step after another, eyes fixed on the cocoon, senses alert, but strangely calm.

The child in my arms didn’t flinch. He didn’t shiver, didn’t tense, didn’t even look away.

And that simple fact—his silence, his tranquility, his mute trust—reassured me a little. As if, despite the unknown, despite the mist and the irregular beating of this living chamber, something in him recognized the place. As if I wasn’t approaching danger... but a threshold.

Then, slowly, I placed my free hand on the entrance. It offered no resistance. On the contrary, it opened on its own, in a soft quiver, almost docile—like an eyelid gently brushed.