The moon rose clean and bright, a coin set carefully on the lake. The trees bowed toward it, their copper leaves whispering as if they knew a password I did not. I followed the narrow dock until wood met water and the night took my reflection in.
Somewhere across the shoreline a single owl tested the air. I answered with silence and a steady breath. The surface stilled. Moon above, moon below—two doors, one world; step through either and you return changed.
I unspooled a small paper boat from a page torn out that morning, a list of plans already outgrown. I set it on the black glass and watched the ink drink the sky. The boat turned once, chose a path the way leaves choose wind, then drifted toward the bright seam where reflection met the real.
Along the bank the maples kept time with the soft lap of water. I could swear the forest was counting—one, two, three—then letting go on four, as if the whole night ran on a rhythm just under hearing. I tapped the dock with my heel. The lake answered with a quiet bar of ripples, and the moon wavered like a promise reconsidered.
When the paper boat crossed the silver path, it did not sink. It simply thinned into light, as though the lake had been waiting to read it. The owl fell silent. The trees stood taller. Somewhere, a new wind chose me.
Dawn was still hours away, but the path ahead glowed with a faint, root-deep shimmer— as though the forest had borrowed a little moonlight and hidden it under the moss. I followed the pulse of it, soft and patient, like footsteps I hadn’t taken yet.
The air grew warmer the farther I walked. Not summer warm, but the kind that comes from intention—like someone had opened a door in the world and was holding it just long enough for me to enter. Branches arched overhead, weaving a slow spiral of silhouettes that tightened with every step.
At the center of the spiral stood a stone well, waist-high, rim smoothed by more hands than mine. No rope. No bucket. Just a clear surface inside, still as polished obsidian. Moon above, moon below—again—but this time the reflection waited, expectant, as if trying to decide whether it recognized me.
I leaned closer. The water brightened. It wasn’t a mirror now but a corridor, the same silver seam the paper boat had taken—only wider, deeper, shaped by choice instead of chance. For a moment I felt the night hold its breath. Even the insects paused.
A ripple formed along the edge, concentric and slow, like the start of a long-mixed track easing into a new phase. The shine reached up the stone, brushing my fingertips. It felt cool, but carried a quiet instruction: not yet. listen first.
From somewhere beyond the treeline, a low hum gathered—steady, warm, unmistakably rhythmic. It vibrated through the moss, up through my shoes, into my chest. The night had grown a heartbeat. Or maybe it had always had one and I had finally arrived on the right beat.
I stepped back from the well. The shimmer faded to a beckoning glow. Whatever waited beneath that surface wanted a traveler ready to hear the next bar. So I stood beneath the turning leaves, listening, letting the forest teach me its tempo, until I knew the moment to continue would come on the downbeat.
The downbeat arrived like a soft falling leaf—quiet, but sure of its place in the measure. The hum shifted, widening into layered tones that folded over each other, the way melodies do when a DJ raises a second channel without touching the fader yet. The forest didn’t just sound alive now; it sounded arranged.
As the rhythm settled, the glow from the well stretched outward in thin silver lines, threading through the moss like veins. They didn’t point in one direction—they flowed in all directions, branching like choices I hadn’t spoken aloud.
One path brightened.
Not forcefully. Not urgently. Just… confidently. Like it knew something about me I hadn’t admitted yet.
I followed.
The ground beneath my feet felt different here—springy, almost responsive. Each step sent a soft thrum through the roots, and the roots answered back, echoing the note a half-beat later. A call and response. A conversation I hadn’t realized I was capable of having.
Ahead, the trees leaned inward, forming an archway. Their bark held faint patterns—swirls, crescents, lines that looked less like knots and more like handwriting. As I approached, the markings rearranged themselves into a symbol I recognized from nowhere and everywhere at once: a circle split by a rising diagonal, like a turntable pitch fader frozen mid-shift.
Warm light spilled from beyond the arch.
I stepped through.
The forest opened into a clearing lit from below, as if someone had tucked a constellation under the ground. Tiny motes drifted in the air—lazy, luminous, unbothered by gravity. They pulsed gently, syncing with the hum now rolling in slow waves through the space.
At the center of the clearing stood a figure.
Not human. Not exactly.
Tall, with the posture of someone who’d spent a lifetime listening. Cloaked in something that wasn’t quite fabric and wasn’t quite light—more like woven dusk. Their face was obscured, but not hidden. Shapes shifted where features should be, like an unrendered reflection waiting to learn me before showing itself.
They raised a hand toward me—palm open, fingers relaxed. A greeting. An invitation.
“You heard it,” a voice murmured. I couldn’t tell if it came from them or from everywhere at once. “You followed the tempo.”
The lights dimmed around us, focusing to a single soft spotlight from nowhere.
“What comes next,” the voice continued, “is chosen, not given.”
They stepped aside, revealing another pathway behind them—this one shimmering with the same corridor-silver I’d seen in the well. But the glow thrummed with a new pattern now, one that matched the rhythm I’d felt in my own chest since entering the clearing.
A recognition.
A sync.
The figure tilted its head, as if listening for something only I could decide.
“Are you ready for the next measure?”
The path brightened, waiting for my answer.
