Dreams are stitched from threads we can never hold long enough to see clearly.
I blinked hard, hoping to find it again, but the sounds of the town dissolved into the hum of museum silence before I could make it to the end.
The forest didn't just look alive—it moved like a clock winding backward, every sway of the branches slightly offbeat, like they belonged to a rhythm I couldn't hear. The air pulsed warm, then cold, as if it were breathing around me. Somewhere ahead, laughter curved through the trees and stopped too abruptly, like someone had cut the sound mid-breath.
That's how dreams seem to work. You never make it to the end. You make it always just before, leaving you with a thread of wonder, maybe the thread to create an ending yourself. Most would try to end it happily, I would.
Especially since my reality was a nightmare I was still walking around in.
My tongue was still sticking out of my mouth like an Idiot, in my office, hovering there above my desk.
Wow. That was embarrassing. I could feel the temperature rising in my face, and my cheeks had turned red.
I must have walked in my sleep and dreamt as I did. It didn't make sense to me how vivid it was, considering it wasn't real.
My fingers twitched as if they could still brush the phantom rain. I had just felt it on my skin. I'd heard laughter echoing through the trees. The museum felt too sterile now, its filtered air and humming lights making me feel like I was choking. My chest tightened—not just from panic, but from the sharp ache of remembering what I'd lost. I hated how quickly beauty dissolved into fluorescent silence. Am I pretending nothing had changed? My life felt like everything had been bottled up, and pretending was the new norm.
Acting like myself would be the bane of my existence.
Levi was still standing there waiting for me to say something. His shadow stretched across my desk like a question I didn't want to answer. Sometimes I wondered if he could see straight through me.
Heat flushed up the back of my neck and moved through my entire body, and I dropped my gaze, willing myself to disappear.
I moved my arm up and rubbed my temple—the pressure grounding me, or maybe just holding together the weight of too many things I couldn't explain.
When I finally looked up, Levi Morgan stood by my desk, a small, amused crease in his brow.
"I was... just thinking about how I wanted some water," I mumbled, spinning toward the fridge to grab a bottle.
There was no way I could explain what just happened, because I didn't even understand it myself. Nothing like that has ever happened before.
I clenched onto the bottle of filtered liquid and pressed it towards my dry, panic-swollen mouth, almost finishing the whole drink.
The echoes of that forest threaded through my chest like a memory that wasn't mine.
I glanced back out the window, still trying to get myself together while Levi's tall presence lingered on the other side of reality.
Outside, the sun had climbed higher, casting sharper gold across the museum's silent halls, too bright for how unsteady I felt.
I drank the rest to have something to do for a moment longer. The cold stung down my throat, but it didn't clear the haze.
That place hadn't been real.
And yet—I missed it.
The part that scared me most wasn't that I'd imagined it.
It was the possibility that I hadn't.
If it was real, then something was unraveling.
And if it wasn't, then maybe I was.
But what was more likely here?
Maybe I need to get some more sleep.
I capped the bottle and set it on the desk, not trusting my hands to stay steady.
Behind me, Levi shifted his weight.
"So…" he said carefully, "just water, huh? As if he could tell there was something more going on.
He stepped closer and set a small stack of files on my desk.
"Well, here's another batch of merged records for you. Hot off the archive. Oh, and I heard you have a review coming up sometime next week."
He didn't press me about the tongue-out moment. He just gave a half-smile and dropped the files as if nothing had happened.
"Yeah, hopefully I make it back," I said jokingly before realizing he wouldn't get it.
He gave me a look, half curious, half quiet, as if he were already accustomed to me being a little strange.
"You'll be fine. " He said before turning to walk out.
But just before he disappeared, he paused in the doorway and glanced back.
"The memories in this place," he said. "They find who they want to find."
The way he said it left something in the air—unseen, but impossible to ignore.
I didn't know how to lift it, so I just stood there. I blinked, still slightly disoriented.
Maybe he hadn't seen what I saw. Perhaps the memories in this place had found both of us.
And if they had found me, I had no idea what they wanted.
But something was still there, pressing at the corners of my mind.
I began on the stack he dropped off.
The hours blurred into the quiet rhythm of work.
I had just finished logging the last entry when I heard footsteps in the hall, followed by a familiar voice.
"Valley. I knew you'd still be here."
Cali leaned against the doorframe, her brown hair a little looser than it had been that morning, when I rushed past her toward the stairs, too fast for her to say hello. A slim tablet was tucked under one arm, a half-eaten bar in the other, and her brown eyes bugged out like she had been waiting to speak to me all day.
Her threadband blinked faintly at her wrist, still syncing data from the Intake Wing.
"Long day?" I asked.
"Only if you count a box of drinkware that tested positive for a thread echo."
I straightened slightly. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. Barely there, but enough to trigger the scanner. Probably grief-based."
She made an eager face. Finding someone else's pain was a highlight of her day.
I didn't envy her job. Most echoes, if any were found, were left from grief, but she always held out hope that she'd find something else.
"Anyways, I finally got my compatibility results." She said, changing the subject.
I blinked, adjusting my threadband like I could shake loose the memory from earlier—the one still clinging like static in the back of my mind.
"Oh?" I replied, hoping I didn't seem uncaring. I just don't know what caring looks like anymore, or how to genuinely care. I was still learning how to get back to myself. Myself before him.
"Forty-three percent." She looked disappointed.
Compatibility scores weren't just numbers—they determined futures. Careers, housing, and even who received certain medical benefits.
"Ouch," I said, offering a sympathetic smile.
"Right?" She sighed dramatically. "I mean, I thought we aligned, you know? Emotionally."
I meant it for her, but part of me flinched too.
We were gone before the system could even define us.
Our people believed it was destiny. However, rumors circulated, labeling it a cage.
"But my empathic resonance was too low, and his neural pairing rate showed lag. Whatever that means." She continued, and I began to wonder if I had missed anything she said. I have been doing that a lot lately, tuning people out and getting lost in my own thoughts. I never meant to. It would just happen.
"Science ruins everything." I returned, hoping my vague response was sufficient.
She laughed. "Seriously. I just wanted to like someone without it becoming a math problem. Will we ever find our perfect matches, Valley?"
I nodded, still smiling. Then laughed at her joke to keep up appearances, but the ache behind it wasn't only for her.
We stepped out of my office together, the lights dimming slightly behind us as the system registered our departure.
Our footsteps echoed softly as we walked the familiar corridor side by side.
At the hall split, our threadbands chimed softly—shift complete.
We continued out the front doors.
"Same time tomorrow?" Cali asked.
"Wouldn't miss it," I said.
"She smiled, gave a small wave, and turned down the left-hand path.
I watched her go for a moment, then took the other toward home.
I walked on, the sound of her footsteps fading behind me.
The ache didn't.
Some things follow, no matter which path you choose.
The seal on the cloth that wrapped the journal kept resurfacing in my mind, gold-threaded, delicate, a nightshade flower in full bloom.
Beautiful or Poisonous?
By the time I stepped out into the city, everything had quieted. Like the night was haunted by souls too afraid to speak.
The journal was still at my side and on my mind; the fabric of my bag stretched thin where my fingers kept finding it. I kept imagining Levi's eyes narrowing in front of me, even though he had long been gone, seeing straight through the fabric. I should report it, I told myself. But I didn't. And that silence was becoming its own kind of betrayal.
I had kept my hand there so long that it no longer felt like paper and ink.
It felt like someone was waiting.
Someone who wasn't afraid to speak. Not anymore.
I haven't opened it again, not yet.
But I could feel it breathing in the silence, patient and sure. Whatever thread had been pulled today, it wasn't finished unraveling.
And neither was I.