Chapter 5 — Puff
And thus begins Chapter Five.
Now, children.
We returned to Nyx’s house.
The quest item
acquired.
The destination
reached.
The novice
vibrating.
The council watches as Nyx enters the house.
Up the stairs.
Into his room.
Door closed.
Locked.
And there
a sofa.
Nyx sat.
Calm.
Collected.
A man who had done this before.
And I?
Children.
I existed somewhere in the general vicinity of the sofa.
Physically.
Spiritually?
I was vibrating at a frequency detectable only by nearby wildlife.
The council laughs.
Weeks of asking.
Repeated refusal.
A train journey.
Kanyakumari.
The dealer.
The family lunch.
The mysterious phrase:
Idukki Gold.
And now
finally.
Nyx pulled out the packet.
The council leans forward.
He opened it.
Smelled it.
Paused.
Then gave the verdict.
“Good shit.”
The council nods solemnly.
Agricultural certification complete.
He passed it to me.
I smelled it.
Children.
Did I know what good weed smelled like?
No.
Did I know what bad weed smelled like?
Also no.
Did I possess literally any frame of reference?
None.
But
I liked it.
Earthy.
Strange.
Distinct.
Something my brain immediately filed under:
Interesting.
The council watches.
Then Nyx began preparing the joint.
And I
stared.
Not casually.
Reverence.
Children.
Remember,
this was before rolling became familiar.
Before joints became ordinary enough to exist in pockets,
behind buses,
on beaches,
in forests,
near buffets,
and apparently throughout half the Archive.
At this moment?
This was ritual.
Nyx knew what he was doing.
Hands moving with practiced familiarity.
A little from the packet.
Tobacco.
Paper.
The pieces becoming one thing.
And younger Nuo watched like an apprentice witnessing forbidden craftsmanship.
The council whispers.
Agricultural onboarding.
Exactly.
Eventually
there it was.
The joint.
My first joint.
The council grows ceremonially quiet.
And before we smoked it
I took out my phone.
Click.
Photo.
The council freezes.
Of course you did.
Children.
Of course I did.
Archivist behaviour.
Again.
Before I knew the Archivist existed.
Before photographs became deliberate proof that something had happened.
Before the Wanderings had titles.
Before relics had meaning.
Apparently some instincts were already installed.
Something unusual was happening?
Document it.
The council nods.
The first joint deserved evidence.
At least according to whatever little creature inside me had already begun preserving moments.
Then
fire.
The joint lit.
Nyx explained what I was supposed to do.
Simple enough,
he made it sound.
I listened.
And because cigarettes were already deeply familiar territory,
my brain immediately concluded:
Ah.
Smoking.
I know this.
The council becomes concerned.
Children.
I did not know this.
Nyx passed it to me.
I took it.
Looked at it.
This little burning thing that had somehow justified an entire trip.
And then
first puff.
The council waits.
My lungs immediately filed for independence.
The council erupts.
COUGH.
Children.
Not a delicate cough.
Not:
Ahem.
No.
Violence.
My respiratory system rejected the experience with the passion of a population overthrowing a dictator.
Cough.
Cough.
COUGH.
Eyes watering.
Chest protesting.
Nyx watching his supposedly experienced cigarette smoking roommate discover that prior qualifications were non transferable.
The council laughs.
I was dying.
Visibly.
Dramatically.
Probably folding in half.
The first great lesson of weed:
Apparently lungs can become offended.
But children
persistence.
The defining feature.
The thing that got Nyx to say yes in the first place.
The thing that has repeatedly carried Nuo through situations where common sense might have selected retreat.
So after my body finished attempting exorcism
I tried again.
The council sighs.
Naturally.
Better.
Still not elegant.
But survivable.
The joint moved between us.
Nyx.
Me.
Nyx.
Me.
And eventually
gone.
The council checks the quest log.
FIRST JOINT:
COMPLETE.
NUO:
ALIVE.
LUNGS:
NEGOTIATING TERMS.
Now what?
Children.
This was the question.
I sat.
Waited.
Nyx turned on the television.
The room returned to normal.
No chanting.
No mystical revelation.
No immediate transformation.
Just two college idiots sitting in a room after smoking.
He put on a movie.
And this detail
for reasons memory has chosen to preserve with absurd clarity
survives.
X Men.
The first one.
The council nods.
Excellent archival priority.
Names?
Sometimes missing.
Routes?
Missing.
Hours of entire nights?
Gone.
But which movie was playing during my first high?
X Men.
Crystal clear.
Memory is a drunk librarian.
We established this.
So
X Men.
Television.
Sofa.
Nyx.
Nuo.
And for a while
nothing.
The council pauses.
Nothing?
Nothing.
I watched.
Waited.
Checked internally.
Maybe looked at Nyx.
Then back at the movie.
The council leans in.
Is this it?
That was beginning to occur to me.
Children.
Remember the arrogance.
“How good can it be?”
Well,
at first,
apparently:
not very.
I had coughed like a Victorian consumptive.
And now I was watching mutants on television feeling
normal.
The council laughs.
Perhaps Nyx oversold this.
Perhaps the sacred first time doctrine was marketing.
Perhaps weed was simply cigarettes with more ceremony.
I do not remember asking.
But I remember waiting.
And then
something.
The council grows quiet.
Small.
So small that at first I wasn’t certain anything had changed.
A tingle.
Through the body.
Not unpleasant.
Quite the opposite.
Good.
A gentle current under the skin.
The kind of sensation that makes you shift slightly and think:
Oh.
There you are.
The council leans forward.
My head felt lighter.
Not dizzy.
Not yet anything dramatic.
Just
less weighted.
Then colour.
Children.
The television seemed
richer.
Maybe the room too.
Saturation slowly turning upward.
Nothing became a different colour.
Reality simply seemed more committed to the colours it already had.
The council nods.
Edges softened.
That is another piece I remember.
The hard borders of things seemed less important.
Room.
Sofa.
Television.
Body.
The world did not disappear.
It just became
gentler around the edges.
Blurred slightly.
Soft.
The council grows quiet.
And I began noticing it.
Really noticing it.
The change had not arrived like alcohol.
Alcohol I knew.
That familiar loosening.
That warmth.
That deterioration of judgment dressed as confidence.
This was not that.
This was something I had no category for.
Which meant I could not predict it.
Could not compare it properly.
Could only sit there and observe.
Children.
Pre Drugs Nuo had entered genuinely new territory.
The council watches him carefully.
Tingle.
Lightness.
Colour.
Soft edges.
And somewhere underneath
a feeling.
Growing.
Pleasant.
Uncomplicated.
My body seemed increasingly comfortable existing.
The sofa?
Better.
The movie?
More interesting.
The room?
Somehow nicer.
The council smiles.
Nothing monumental had happened yet.
No visions.
No psychedelic universes.
No reality collapse.
Just the slow dawning realization that
Oh.
This does something.
Nyx probably watched the change on my face before I fully recognized it myself.
Experienced people tend to find novices very entertaining.
The council nods knowingly.
And then that old sentence returned.
Not spoken.
Just somewhere in memory.
How good can it be?
The council goes silent.
Children.
There are questions you ask because you want information.
And there are questions you ask because the universe enjoys having material for later.
This had been the second kind.
Because something was beginning.
Something I had no vocabulary for.
I had spent the entire journey constructing imaginary dealers.
Imaginary rituals.
Imaginary versions of what weed might be.
But I had barely imagined the experience itself.
How could I?
You cannot picture a sensation you have never had.
You can hear people explain.
Relaxed.
High.
Stoned.
Good.
Funny.
Hungry.
Words.
Children.
Words are useless until the body gives them meaning.
And now
slowly
they were becoming meaning.
The movie continued.
X Men moved across the screen.
Nyx sat beside me,
entirely unsurprised.
And I began sinking farther into this new state.
The council leans forward.
Story Nuo still did not know what was coming next.
Neither shall we.
Archive law.
One door at a time.
For this moment,
there is only the onset.
The first little signal.
The first:
Oh.
The first shift in colour.
The first softening of reality.
The first time my brain encountered cannabis and began trying to understand the new rules.
Children.
And years later,
when the bracelet clicked around my wrist
and that forgotten tag surfaced in memory,
this was part of what returned with it.
Not just a destination.
Not just a dealer.
Not just a first joint.
An era with a before and after.
But again
Present Nuo language.
Story Nuo was not thinking about eras.
He was staring at X Men.
Feeling his body tingle.
Probably smiling slightly.
And beginning to suspect Nyx had not travelled all the way home for no reason.
The council smiles.
Nyx had said:
“Your first time is sacred.”
Story Nuo had responded:
“How good can it be?”
And there,
on a sofa in Kanyakumari,
reality slowly softening around him
he was about to receive the answer.
Thus concludes Chapter Five.
The Locked Door.
The Packet.
The Agricultural Ritual.
The First Joint.
The Archivist Photograph.
The Respiratory Revolution.
X Men.
The Tingle.
The Saturation.
And The Beginning Of The Answer.
Children.
I had asked:
How good can it be?
The council settles in.
We were about to find out.
