(fantasy miniflash story)

The forest was alive, whispering secrets that only the oldest trees remembered. Rael wandered through, her fingers trailing along the bark, feeling the stories seep into her veins. She was drawn here by a dream—a boy with eyes like embers, calling her name in the dead of night. She had heard of such things before: dreams that were more than dreams, paths that vanished by dawn.

Then, just as the sun began to sink, casting amber light through the thick canopy, she found him, or rather, he found her. The boy was no more than shadows and fire, a flickering vision of something caught between worlds. His voice, like smoke, curled around her, whispering her name as if he had known it for centuries.

“Rael,” he said, his voice rustling like leaves, “do you remember me?”

She shook her head, though something deep in her heart ached with the ghost of forgotten memories.

“The world has changed since you last walked it,” he continued, fading slightly as if the wind might blow him away. “But I am bound to you, as I was then. Find the tree with roots like veins—it will show you what you’ve lost.”

And before she could answer, he vanished, leaving her in the silence of the ancient forest, with nothing but her own heartbeat echoing the memory of a name she had almost remembered.