By the second day in the forest, Ash felt like he was shedding layers he never knew he wore.
He hadn't spoken since he left the road, but the silence was far from empty. It buzzed with presence: rustling leaves, distant birdsong, the hum of insects. Even his own breath had a weight here, a texture.
He found a small clearing encircled by ferns and birch. The ground was soft, blanketed in fallen leaves. It became his camp. No tent, no fire. Just the sky as his roof and the stars as silent companions.
He moved with intention now. Every action—fetching water, washing his face, stretching his limbs—became ritual. His body, long dulled by fluorescent lights and screen glare, began to reawaken. Muscles long forgotten flickered with warmth. His senses sharpened.
One afternoon, he lay with his spine against a fallen log, eyes half closed, when he felt it.
A presence.
Not threatening. Not human.
But aware.
The forest, he realized, was watching him.
Not as a stranger or intruder. As… a guest. Or perhaps a pupil.
He didn't flinch. Instead, he bowed his head slightly—not out of fear, but respect. Whatever consciousness permeated these woods was older than language, older than myth.
He began to walk barefoot, feeling the earth's pulse through the soles of his feet. He chewed wild herbs he couldn't name, tasted bark, let sunlight dance across his eyelids like ancient code. His body began to pulse with a rhythm not taught, but remembered.
At night, lying beneath stars more vivid than he'd ever seen, he whispered to the dark: "I'm ready."
Ready for what, he wasn't sure.
But something in him had shifted. The Ash who had wandered the city streets, who had drowned in fluorescent numbness, was dissolving. And something new was emerging—quieter, but stronger. Rooted, like the trees.
In the silence, a vow formed without words:
"I will not return the same."
Not because he rejected the world he'd left behind. But because he now remembered there was more.
And that more had been waiting—not in the skies above, but in the soil beneath his feet.