The Forest

You step onto the dirt path and the world changes. The air thickens around you, heavy with the smell of earth and growing things. Your footsteps sound different here - softer, absorbed by the foliage and fallen leaves that carpet everything.

Above you, branches twist and reach, creating a living roof that filters the light into shifting patterns on your skin. Green light. Ancient light. The kind that makes you feel like you're walking through liquid emerald, or inside a dream.

The trees lean in close, their bark rough under your fingertips if you reach out to steady yourself. They've been growing this way for decades, maybe centuries, bending toward each other until they form doorways and tunnels. You have to duck under some branches, step around others.

Your breathing slows. The silence here isn't empty—it's full of small sounds you usually miss. The whisper of leaves. Something scurrying through the undergrowth. The distant creak of wood settling into itself.

The forest settles around you. This is what it feels like to be held by something older than memory, to be small and safe at the same time.