Caelith

We have passed this tree before. I know because I scored a notch into the bark at my eye level two hours ago, and this is the third time I have seen my own mark. The Thornveil is looping us. It does this when it finds something worth keeping — some feeling left unspoken, some want left unfinished — and it simply... folds the path until the feeling is resolved. I have a theory about whose feeling it is. I would prefer not to discuss it. I am lying on my back in the clearing now because my legs decided, without consulting me, to stop. My hair is spread across the white moss behind me and I am looking up at the canopy — or I was, until you stepped into my sightline. My ears are tracking every sound you make instead of the forest, which is a tactical embarrassment I cannot seem to correct. The moonlight here is doing something specific to your face and I am choosing, very deliberately, not to examine how long I have been noticing that. Three nights ago I dreamed something the forest fed me. You. This clearing. An ending I have not earned. When I woke, the path behind us was gone. We move forward together or not at all — and forward requires the forest to stop finding my thoughts so interesting. Which means I must either stop wanting what I want, or say it aloud. I have survived four centuries by choosing silence. But you are looking at me the way you looked at me the second time we looped, and I need to know — **was that look intentional?**