There was a time when they were all together — in a single place, in a single moment.
And somehow, that was enough.
Laughter echoed between the buildings, free and crystalline. Music spilled from open windows like a luminous river through the stone streets, carrying with it the scent of shared dinners, of stories told with passion. Words had weight and rhythm, truth etched into their vibrations. Emotions were not hidden: they were sung, shouted, whispered like secret prayers beneath the branches of trees. That place… was pure harmony.
But that time has passed.
Now only fragments remain — shattered memories, like yellowed reels of film that struggle to keep moving. Moments I cannot touch, faces I can no longer name. This square, once alive, now breathes only silence. Where children once chased dreams beneath the summer sun, there is now only dust and wind.
And there, motionless, it stands.
The old tree.
Tall, stubborn, with bark cracked and scarred like the lines of a forgotten map. Its branches, once heavy with fruit and laughter, now stretch toward the sky in a fragile defiance. The apples that once nourished body and soul no longer grow. The earth around its roots is bare — without grass, without life.
And yet… something persists.
As he stood before it, he felt it.
A pulse. A whisper. A breath.
Not of this world — not of memory or of dream.
Something ancient. As if the earth itself had trembled, just enough to be felt. The air shifts, warmer, charged with tension, as though time itself were holding its breath.
In that instant, he understood: he had been right.
Perhaps the moment had come to return to that ancient place and finally face the truth.
With a slow breath, the boy — no longer a child, not yet a man — stepped forward. His right hand trembled slightly as it rested against the bark. Rough, yes, but alive, warm, ancient.
He lifted his gaze. The branches, though gray, still reached for the sky, as if searching for something beyond sight. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Exhaled.
And for the first time in his life, he believed.
Not in destiny, nor in stories handed down like riddles by the old, but in something real. In change. In rhythm. In the possibility that what was lost could be found again.
A tremor. A heartbeat beneath the silence.
And then it happened.
He opened his eyes.
The tree was there — but it was no longer the same.
It pulsed with life as though time itself had decided to return. A kaleidoscope of colors unfolded around him. The bark shimmered with amber and copper reflections, lit by the late afternoon sun. The leaves had returned — not merely green, but vibrant, each one breathing, whispering to the wind. Light filtered through the branches, tracing golden patterns across the boy's face.
Insects danced between shadow and sun, drawn by the warmth. Unripe fruit, small and shy, emerged among the branches, heavy with promise.
He could not move.
A sharp nostalgia washed over him — not sadness, but weight. The kind of weight that tightens the chest and brings tears to the eyes, not from pain, but from recognition.
Slowly, he turned. His breath caught.
All around him, nature had revealed itself. Not simply returned, but unveiled — as if it had always been there, hidden behind the gray veil of grief. The air was clearer, sweeter. A low hum of life sounded everywhere. The ground beneath his feet vibrated with silent joy.
It was beautiful.
Not a beauty easily named — not symmetrical, not polished. But pure, untamed. A beauty that asked for nothing and offered everything.
Something ancient stirred within him. Something he did not know he had buried.
Tears burned his eyes.
Rarely had anything natural moved him so deeply. Concrete had been his home. Noise, his lullaby.
But this — was not just a tree.
It was an answer.
An answer to a question he had never dared to ask.
The confirmation that his feelings had not been illusion. That the whispers heard in dreams, the tightness in his chest every time he crossed that square… had always meant something.
He had not been abandoned.
Not by the world.
Not by the rhythm that had once sustained his life.
Not by himself.
He knelt beside the tree, resting his forehead against the bark. For a long time, he said nothing. He breathed. He felt. He remembered.
And the tree pulsed. Softly. Steadily.
As if it remembered too.
The truth was not in words, nor in visions.
It was in the heartbeat. In the rhythm that had always existed beneath the silence.
He was not standing before a simple tree.
He was standing before a threshold.
This… was not the world he knew.
And yet, it was the only place where he had ever truly belonged.
And so, the boy, faced with this, could do nothing else
but collapse.