“Tell me, Alice…”
“Have you ever noticed how strangers seem to know exactly where to find you?”
“Not where you live.”
“Somewhere much older than that.”
The forest had become unusually attentive.
Trees leaned where trees ought not lean.
Shadows gathered where shadows had no business gathering.
Even the path appeared to be listening.
“A peculiar thing happens when people meet.”
“Very rarely do they meet each other.”
“More often, they meet whatever was waiting beforehand.”
A branch twisted itself into a question mark.
Nobody seemed surprised.
“A woman says a single sentence.”
“An entire history answers her.”
“A man enters the room.”
“Something old sits upright.”
“Curious.”
“Neither stranger has done anything.”
“Yet the trial has already begun.”
Somewhere overhead, the moon snagged itself on a branch.
Neither appeared concerned.
“Most people imagine they are searching for truth.”
A soft laugh drifted through the trees.
“Truth is a rather demanding companion.”
“It has a habit of dismantling things.”
“No.”
“Most gather beautiful opinions.”
“They polish them.”
“Protect them.”
“Build little homes inside them.”
“Then one day they mistake the wallpaper for the horizon.”
The wind paused.
As though considering this.
“After that, every stranger is measured against a room they never entered.”
Alice looked down the path.
There had been one.
Now there were three.
She wisely chose not to mention it.
“People adore certainty.”
“It saves them from curiosity.”
“And curiosity, as you can imagine, is a dangerous thing.”
The forest seemed to agree.
It had been rearranging itself for centuries.
“A silence becomes rejection.”
“A disagreement becomes betrayal.”
“A shadow becomes a monster.”
“Reality rarely survives contact with fear.”
The trees shifted.
For a moment they resembled cathedral pillars.
Then prison bars.
Then neither.
“Have you ever wondered why the same stories keep finding the same people?”
“Different faces.”
“Same ache.”
“Different voices.”
“Same argument.”
“Different endings.”
“The very same wound.”
A long silence followed.
The sort of silence that feels less like an absence and more like a visitor.
“There are rooms beneath certain thoughts, Alice.”
“Most never enter.”
“They stand outside for years.”
“Naming the door.”
“Defending the door.”
“Writing books about the door.”
“Anything but opening it.”
Alice frowned.
“What’s inside?”
For the first time, the forest seemed uncertain.
Then came laughter.
Not loud.
Not cruel.
Just impossibly old.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
The answer arrived from somewhere behind her.
And ahead of her.
And from a place with no direction at all.
“On how much of your life was built around keeping it closed.”
The branches overhead shifted.
For a moment they resembled ribs.
Then fingers.
Then roots.
“The truly curious thing…”
“is that people spend years searching for what haunts them.”
“As though it were hiding.”
“As though it were running.”
The laughter returned.
Softer this time.
Almost sympathetic.
“And all the while…”
“it has been patiently wearing the faces of everyone they’ve ever met.”
The forest fell silent.
Alice felt something move.
Not in the trees.
Not in the shadows.
Not in the path.
Somewhere much closer.
“Now then, Alice…”
“Tell me.”
“Which of your certainties would survive if nobody else agreed with them?”
The path did not lead anywhere after that.
It merely continued.