I blinked hard, hoping to find it again, but the sounds of the town dissolved into the hum of museum silence before I could make it to the end.
That's how dreams seem to work. You never make it to the end. You make it always just before, leaving you with a thread of wonder, maybe the thread to create an ending yourself. Most would try to end it happily, I would.
Especially since my reality was a nightmare I was still walking around in.
My tongue was still sticking out of my mouth like an Idiot, in my office, hovering there above my desk.
Wow. That was embarrassing. I could feel the temperature rising in my face, and my cheeks had turned red.
I'd just felt rain on my skin. I'd heard laughter echoing through the trees. And now I was back beneath artificial lights, pretending nothing had changed.
Heat flushed up the back of my neck and moved through my entire body, and I dropped my gaze, willing myself to disappear.
I moved my arm up and rubbed my temple—the pressure grounding me, or maybe just holding together the weight of too many things I couldn't explain.
When I finally looked up, Levi Morgan stood by my desk, a small, amused crease in his brow.
"I was... just thinking about how I wanted some water," I mumbled, spinning toward the fridge to grab a bottle.
There was no way I could explain what just happened, because I didn't even understand it myself. Nothing like that has ever happened before.
I clenched onto the bottle of filtered liquid and pressed it towards my dry, panic-swollen mouth, almost finishing the whole drink.
The echoes of that forest clung to me still: heavy, sweet, and threading through my chest like a memory that wasn't mine.
I glanced back out the window, still trying to get myself together while Levi's tall presence lingered on the other side of reality.
Outside, the sun had climbed higher, casting sharper gold across the museum's silent halls, too bright for how unsteady I felt.
I drank the rest to have something to do for a moment longer. The cold stung down my throat, but it didn't clear the haze.
That place hadn't been real.
And yet—I missed it.
The part that scared me most wasn't that I'd imagined it.
It was the possibility that I hadn't.
If it was real, then something was unraveling.
And if it wasn't, then maybe I was.
But what was more likely here?
Maybe I need to get some more sleep.
I capped the bottle and set it on the desk, not trusting my hands to stay steady.
Behind me, Levi shifted his weight.
"So…" he said carefully, "just water, huh? As if he could tell there was something more going on.
He stepped closer and set a small stack of files on my desk.
"Well, here's another batch of merged records for you. Hot off the archive."
He didn't press me about the tongue-out moment. He just gave a half-smile and dropped the files as if nothing had happened.
He gave me a look, half curious, half quiet, as if he were already accustomed to me being a little strange. Then he turned and walked out.
But just before he disappeared, he paused in the doorway and glanced back.
"The memories in this place," he said. "They find who they want to find."
The way he said it left something in the air—unseen, but impossible to ignore.
I didn't know how to lift it, so I just stood there. I blinked, still slightly disoriented.
Maybe he hadn't seen what I saw. Perhaps the memories in this place had found both of us.
And if they had found me, I had no idea what they wanted.
But something was still there, pressing at the corners of my mind.
Not new. Not forgotten.
Just silently waiting.
Some time had passed after Levi left.
I had just finished logging the last entry when I heard footsteps in the hall, followed by a familiar voice.
"Valley. I knew you'd still be here."
Cali leaned against the doorframe, her brown hair a little looser than it had been that morning, when I rushed past her toward the stairs, too fast for her to say hello. A slim tablet was tucked under one arm, a half-eaten bar in the other, and her brown eyes bugged out like she had been waiting to speak to me all day.
Her threadband blinked faintly at her wrist, still syncing data from the Intake Wing.
"Long day?" I asked.
"Only if you count a box of drinkware that tested positive for a thread echo."
I straightened slightly. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. Barely there, but enough to trigger the scanner. Probably grief-based."
She made an eager face. Finding someone else's pain was a highlight of her day.
I didn't envy her job. Most echoes, if any were found, were left from grief, but she always held out hope that she'd find something else.
"Anyways, I finally got my compatibility results." She said, changing the subject.
I blinked, adjusting my threadband like I could shake loose the memory from earlier—the one still clinging like static in the back of my mind.
"Oh?" I replied, hoping I didn't seem uncaring. I just don't know what caring looks like anymore, or how to genuinely care. I was still learning how to get back to myself. Myself before him.
"Forty-three percent." She looked disappointed.
"Ouch," I said, offering a sympathetic smile.
"Right?" She sighed dramatically. "I mean, I thought we aligned, you know? Emotionally."
I meant it for her, but part of me flinched too.
We were gone before the system could even define us.
"But my empathic resonance was too low, and his neural pairing rate showed lag. Whatever that means."
Science ruins everything."
She laughed. "Seriously. I just wanted to like someone without it becoming a math problem."
I nodded, still smiling. But the ache behind it wasn't only for her.
We stepped out of my office together, the lights dimming slightly behind us as the system registered our departure.
Our footsteps echoed softly as we walked the familiar corridor side by side.
At the hall split, our threadbands chimed softly—shift complete.
We continued out the front doors.
"Same time tomorrow?" Cali asked.
"Wouldn't miss it," I said.
"She smiled, gave a small wave, and turned down the left-hand path.
I watched her go for a moment, then took the other toward home.
I walked on, the sound of her footsteps fading behind me.
The ache didn't.
Some things follow, no matter which path you choose.
The seal on the cloth that wrapped the journal kept resurfacing in my mind, gold-threaded, delicate, a nightshade flower in full bloom.
Beautiful or Poisonous?
By the time I stepped out into the city, everything had quieted. Like the night was haunted by souls too afraid to speak.
The journal was still at my side and on my mind; the fabric of my bag stretched thin where my fingers kept finding it.
It no longer felt like paper and ink.
It felt like someone was waiting.
Someone who wasn't afraid to speak. Not anymore.
I haven't opened it again, not yet.
But the thread had already begun to pull.
When the silence asked me to.