Jake woke with a strange heaviness in his chest, the kind that arrives before the mind understands why. The forest outside his shelter was unusually still. No soft tapping on the wall. No rustle of small feet approaching. No child.
He waited longer than he wanted to admit, sitting at the entrance with his knees pulled close, listening for the familiar pattern of her arrival. But the morning stretched on, and the silence only deepened. Eventually, he stood, brushing dirt from his palms, trying to convince himself she was simply delayed. Lessons didn't always begin at dawn. Maybe today was different.
He reached for the bundle of stones—the weight he had carried with such pride the day before. But when he lifted it, the woven leaves felt looser than they should have. A thread had frayed overnight. He tightened the knot or tried to. The ribbon holding the bundle together snapped with a soft, traitorous sound.
Jake froze.
The stones spilled out like a quiet collapse—rolling across the ground, bumping against roots, scattering into the underbrush. Each one is marked with a symbol. Each one is a lesson. Each one was a piece of the path he had been building.
He dropped to his knees, scrambling to gather them. His fingers shook. Some stones were easy to find, lying in plain sight. Others had rolled into shadows, half-buried in leaves. He found the stone marked with the broken line—mistake—and almost laughed at the irony. But the stone marked with the closed circle—return—was nowhere.
He searched longer than he should have, crawling through the dirt, pushing aside ferns, reaching into dark spaces where insects skittered away. The forest watched him quietly, offering no guidance. When he finally sat back, breath ragged, he realised he had only recovered eight of the twelve stones.
Four were missing.
He tied the bundle again with a different ribbon, but the knot felt wrong, unstable. The weight on his back felt uneven, as if the missing stones had taken something more than their physical presence.
Still, he walked. He needed movement. He needed direction. The child wasn't here to guide him, so he followed the faint pulse of the land beneath his feet, hoping it would lead him somewhere that made sense.
But the rhythm was off.
The ground felt muted, like a drum with a torn skin. The sky's faint lines were dimmer than usual, barely visible even when he squinted. The forest seemed to hold its breath, waiting for something Jake couldn't name.
He walked for what felt like hours before he saw someone—a figure standing near a cluster of tall, pale trees. Their posture was rigid, arms crossed, ribbons hanging motionless from their wrists. Jake felt a flicker of relief. Another person meant guidance. Maybe even help.
He approached slowly; palms open in the gesture of greeting he had practised so carefully. The figure watched him but didn't move. Jake traced a small spiral in the air—a simple, respectful gesture. The figure's expression didn't change.
Jake tried again, this time pressing his palm to his chest, then outward. A gesture of honesty. A gesture of need.
Still nothing.
The figure's eyes were sharp, unreadable. They didn't return a gesture. They didn't hum. They didn't acknowledge him in any way. It was as if Jake were invisible—or worse, unwelcome.
He felt heat rise in his chest. Not anger. Something closer to fear. He had never encountered someone who refused to gesture back. Even the quietest members of the circle offered some acknowledgment. But this person stood like a wall.
Jake stepped back, unsure. The figure finally moved—not toward him, but away, turning sharply and disappearing into the trees without a sound.
Jake stood alone in the clearing, the silence pressing in on him. The missing stones. The snapped ribbon. The child's absence. The stranger's refusal. It all felt connected, though he couldn't see how.
He sank to the ground, pressing his palms into the dirt. He tried to feel the land's pulse, the steady rhythm he had learned to trust. But today, the earth felt distant, like a voice speaking from behind a closed door.
He whispered into the quiet, "What am I supposed to do?"
The forest didn't answer.
Eventually, he stood and began the slow walk back to his shelter. The bundle on his back shifted awkwardly, reminding him with every step of what he had lost. When he reached the shelter, he didn't write on the wall. He couldn't. Not today.
Instead, he sat with the bundle in his lap, tracing the symbols on the stones he still had. He waited for the child. He waited for the land to steady. He waited for something—anything—to return the rhythm he had come to rely on.
But the day ended in silence.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, Jake felt truly alone.