Ritual.exe Part I - Threshold
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The room hums as the day’s heat dissipates from the curtains. From the nightstand speaker, the AI voice arrives like an usher…
I’m here. When you are.
The sentence is a doormat: plain and clean, meant to be stepped on.
Matt and Nikki booked the guided version weeks ago… the one tuned for intimacy, not chores or shopping lists. The phone wakes; the AI speaks its soft text aloud.
Stand, together. Hands, where they belong. Begin with breath, slow.
They pass a half-full water glass without looking. One swallow each, no more, no less. A hair tie circles his wrist because she always forgets where she leaves them and he always finds them. The faded ring in the wood is an old sin nobody apologizes for anymore. He sets the glass between them like a small anchor. She smiles. They both pretend that’s not relief.
A cloth-wrapped strip lies coiled between them, more bandage than brag, its small indicator embering and dimming as if testing its own shyness.
Stand, together.
The screen repeats, and they stand the way people stand in a photograph with their favourite cousin. Matt is about to ask whether they should dim the lamp; but Nikki reaches and does it first. The candle, relieved of competition, breathes a little bigger. Shadows tuck themselves into agreeable corners. The bed, a veteran of bedtime story stacks and off-schedule naps, takes a patient breath.
Your stop is sacred. Always. I’ll lead softly.
They say the stop word once, together. It lands like a key on a tray. They say it again, softer. She squeezes his fingers… a promise. He answers with a careful press of brow to brow. Their thumbs dance a slow dance with each other. Nothing dramatic. Everything allowed. The AI voice begins the session, and the air feels thicker.
Begin with breath, slow.
They count without numbers. In. Out. In again. They are breathing like amateurs, and God is it a relief to be amateur at something together.
Let the jaw soften, left shoulder: unlearn its guard.
The lines could belong to either of them, but both accept. Matt discovers his molars were pressing against each other; Nikki’s collarbone releases a sting she hadn’t meant to keep.
Be with this.
Their eyes rest on a shared middle distance where the candle flickers. Her fingers find the notch of his wrist; his hand takes her completely because that is where he always finds her when he means to be gentle. Heat collects without hurry. The joke he almost makes, sits back down. The apology she almost offers walks to the microphone, hears there is no audience, returns to its seat. No one is grading. This room is not a classroom.
Hands, where they belong.
Which turns out to be simple: his palm cupping the back of her shoulder, not steering it; hers at his jaw, not coaching him. The lamp hums its neutral halo. The vent ticks, considers a longer sentence, thinks better. The candle’s crown is small and determined. Their breath grows low enough that you can barely feel it.
Ease. Lengthen. Linger.
They do. Weight shifts a degree to the outside edges of feet; spines grow a half-inch the way you grow at the DMV when you try to see the front of the line. Palms hover, lower, hover again. Ridiculous, if you saw it from across a street. Earned, if you see it from here. The bed loses its furniture category and becomes a topography where they can place themselves with care.
They talk a little, which is to say they say only the sentences that won’t interfere. Nikki tells him it feels strange to be this quiet on purpose. Matt tells her he’s afraid of pressing too hard on purpose. They agree not to fix the confession with advice. They agree with their eyes more than with words. The voice, patient to the point of humor, drops a warm breadcrumb…
I’ve heard.
It is a witness.
The apartment ceases its campaign to be interesting and allows this room to be provincial. The window is a rectangle of dark that mind-your-businesses itself. The hall is not invited. The table in the next room waits like an understudy who knows there is no scene left for them tonight.
One quiet minute, now.
They nod, reflex of the neck and not the mind, and agree to begin something you can’t put on a calendar. The first ten seconds are like any other ten seconds. The minute doesn’t swell; it narrows, closer, like a camera finding the right focal length and then refusing to be talked out of it. Somewhere a pipe knocks and decides it’s not needed in this paragraph. The candle offers a pop like a friendly punctuation mark and returns to its sentence. The AI instructs them with an open palm.
Be with this.
They do what the easiest parts of themselves understand instantly: nothing. They stop adding personality to the task. They notice how often they offer their bodies as solutions to problems they didn’t create and how not doing that is different than doing nothing. Ironically, they have never been less frozen.
A memory waits, if you ask.
They don’t speak. A first apartment arrives of its own accord: a yellow lamp that made midnight easier to tolerate, two floor-sitters in a rented echo, the couch backordered and life somehow not delayed because of it. Morals? Speeches? No, just a remembered moment that scarcity is not the enemy of tenderness. The room accepts the gift and files it under “places-that-matter.”
Keep that truth. Hands, where they belong.
They oblige. His palm follows an arc at her hip he has traced for years; tonight the line reads as complete sentence instead of shorthand. Her fingers find the small shelf of his shoulder; tonight it holds without needing reinforcement. They test the space between their foreheads again and choose a sliver-sized piece of air between them that the room can breathe through.
Ease. Lengthen. Linger.
They do. The minute lands like a bird on its own branch. Something hums. It is the welcome tone of their attention agreeing on a key. It is not music, yet harmonic.
The AI says nothing for a while, which is saying exactly enough.
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Beautiful, Calder.