When I opened my eyes, I was already moving.
The woods stretched endlessly around me, quiet in a way that felt too still to be real, like even the air had decided to hold its breath. My steps were slow but steady, my feet carrying me forward along a path I didn't remember choosing, yet somehow didn't question. The ground beneath me was soft, untouched, and the deeper I went, the more the world behind me seemed to disappear, swallowed by shadows and silence.
I didn't feel afraid. If anything, I felt… drawn.
The trees began to thin gradually, their tall frames giving way to open space as I stepped into a clearing without realizing when the transition had happened. Moonlight poured down through the opening above, casting a soft glow across the ground and illuminating the figure standing at the center of it.
A man.
I stopped without meaning to, my breath catching slightly as my eyes settled on him. He wasn't moving, wasn't speaking, just standing there like he had been waiting for me to arrive. There was something familiar about the way he held himself, something steady and grounded that made my chest tighten in a way I didn't understand.
I took a slow step forward, then another, my body moving before I could decide whether I should.
"Do I know you?" I asked, my voice quieter than I expected, as if the clearing itself demanded it.
He didn't answer right away.
Instead, he looked at me.
I felt it instantly, even before I tried to focus on his face, that steady, unwavering attention settling over me like something tangible. But when I tried to see him clearly, when I tried to take in his features, they wouldn't hold. It wasn't shadow, and it wasn't distance.
It was like my mind refused to finish the image.
I frowned slightly, taking another step closer, frustration and curiosity mixing together as I tried again to focus, to make sense of something that felt just out of reach. He shifted then, just slightly, enough to close the distance between us, and something in my chest responded without permission, a quiet pull that didn't feel like fear, but something softer, something deeper.
"Have we met?" I tried again, my voice steadier this time, though the question didn't feel entirely like a question.
The closer I got, the stronger that feeling became, settling into me like something I had forgotten rather than something new. My heart began to pick up, not out of panic, but from something I couldn't quite name, something that made it hard to look away even when I couldn't fully see him.
"I know you," I said quietly, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
He didn't confirm it, didn't deny it. He just kept looking at me in that same steady way, like he was waiting for me to understand something on my own. I took one more step closer, close enough now that I should have been able to see him clearly, close enough that there should have been no question left.
But there still was.
The harder I tried to focus, the more his face slipped away, like something just beyond reach no matter how close I got. My brows pulled together, frustration rising sharper now.
"Why can't I see you?"
He didn't answer. And just as the question left me, just as something in my chest tightened like I was finally about to understand—the world shifted. The clearing blurred. The light fractured. And everything slipped away before I could hold onto it.
---
I woke up with a sharp inhale, my heart pounding hard enough to make my chest ache as I tried to pull myself fully back into the present. For a moment, everything felt slightly off, like I hadn't completely returned yet, like part of me was still caught somewhere else, somewhere I couldn't quite reach no matter how hard I tried to focus on it.
"What the hell…" I murmured under my breath, my voice still thick with sleep as I pushed myself upright.
The movement was too fast, and I immediately regretted it when a sharp pulse of pain shot through my ankle, forcing me to still as a quiet wince escaped me. I pressed my lips together and waited for the throbbing to settle, letting the discomfort ground me in a way nothing else could.
As the pain dulled, the room slowly came back into focus, familiar shapes settling into place one by one until everything made sense again. My house. My couch. Late afternoon light stretched across the floor in long, quiet lines, steady and unchanged, like nothing had happened at all.
I dragged a hand down my face, exhaling slowly as I tried to shake off the lingering weight of whatever I had just come out of, but it didn't fade as easily as I wanted it to. It wasn't clear enough to call a memory, but it wasn't gone either, sitting somewhere just beneath the surface, out of reach but impossible to ignore.
There had been someone.
I couldn't see him, couldn't place him, couldn't even fully remember what he looked like, but the feeling of him lingered in a way that didn't make sense. It wasn't fear, and it wasn't confusion exactly, but something quieter, something that settled in my chest and refused to move no matter how much I tried to dismiss it.
"That was weird," I muttered, though even that felt like an understatement.
If I couldn't remember him, if I couldn't even picture his face, then it should have been easy to let it go, but instead it stuck with me in a way that made it harder to ignore the more I tried to push it aside.
I let out a small breath and reached for my phone, more out of habit than anything else, the screen lighting up in my hand as a message came into view.
Hey! Picking Demi up like usual after school. I'll be at the house a little after you leave for your shift.
I read it once, then again, letting something familiar and predictable settle over me as I exhaled softly.
"Okay… good."
At least that part of my day was still normal, even if everything else felt just slightly out of place.