Chapter 203: And Still, I Flee
From that moment on... I no longer really knew how. But I had ended up reaching a platform. A flat space. Stable. A stopping point. Or maybe just a pause offered out of pity.
I didn’t know if I had gotten there by walking. Or crawling. Or maybe... both. At times. Alternating.
I didn’t remember the last steps. My body had moved, that was all I could say. It had slid, pulled, dragged what was left of me here. Without me understanding whether it was I who was moving forward, or if something had pushed me there.
I floated between two breaths. Suspended. Neither alive, nor entirely broken. Just there, held by a strange inertia, carried by a refusal too ancient to still have a name. A resistance without form, without scream, without real strength — but still standing.
Something in me said no. Not with words. Not with a thought. A deeper no. Older. That of a being who falls but does not yield. That of a memory that refuses to die entirely, even when everything else already has.
And then... they were there. The moss cushions. The ones from the beginning. The same, or maybe others, but I immediately recognized that spongy softness, that vegetal warmth, that silent promise of a rest without judgment.
This time, I didn’t resist. I didn’t pretend. I didn’t make myself beg. I fell into them. Completely. Body, breath, thought. Without struggle. Without grace. Like one collapses into something softer than oneself, not out of trust, but because there is nothing else left to oppose. Because everything has already been given. And the ground, at least, asks for nothing.
My muscles gave out before my mind. They loosened on their own, without warning, as if they had been waiting for this moment to finally betray their duty. I sank into the moss like into a forgotten womb, warm, alive, almost maternal — a refuge without form, without promise.
And I thought I slept. Just for a moment. A suspended heartbeat. A slide into something blurrier, softer. But true sleep didn’t exist here. Not in this world. What came was not rest. It was something else. A disguised memory. A slow illusion, slow like an ancient poison one breathes in without realizing. Nothing extinguished. Everything remained. Lurking. Waiting for me to see it.
She returned. First... a shiver. Light. Insidious. Like an invisible hand brushing the nape of the neck, without really touching it. Then a beat of warm air, irregular, almost organic — as if something was breathing too close to me, without breath, without body, but present nonetheless.
The space around seemed to contract imperceptibly, to welcome an absence made tangible. I hadn’t seen her. Not yet. But I already knew. It was her. Her again. Always her.