Devendra sat by the window, his gaze tracing the faint ripples on the river outside. He didn't move much, barely shifted his body, but inside him, a strange stirring had begun—a subtle, almost imperceptible current.
It felt as though he were drifting, suspended in some unseen water, weightless. His thoughts moved slowly, circling back on themselves like fish in a tank, darting, hesitating, never breaking the surface.
He realized, with a startling clarity, that he had been living half-submerged for so long. Every heartbeat, every memory, every fragment of his life felt like it had been floating beside him, never fully touched, never fully owned. He had moved, eaten, slept, spoken—but none of it had truly anchored him.
"I… I've been like this for so long," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the soft breeze through the window. "Like I'm here, but not… really here. Like a fish out of water… no, like a fish in water, but one that doesn't know which way is up."
He closed his eyes. Scanning himself, he could feel the shadows of his past stretching across his consciousness. Dreams, nightmares, fleeting fragments of laughter, whispers, fear—they were all there, like invisible threads tugging at the edges of his mind. Yet, he felt no immediate panic. There was no terror. Only observation.
Step by step, he began cataloging the sensations within him:
The tightness in his chest when he remembered the empty village.
The faint pulse of dread that came when he recalled being caught in endless loops of fear.
The hollow ache of absence—something lost but not entirely gone.
It was strange, almost clinical, how precise these feelings had become. He could track them like a scanner tracing the currents in water, mapping every eddy, every swirl.
"And maybe… this is why," he murmured to himself. "Why part of me never stopped drifting. Why I felt… untethered. Maybe it was meant to be this way. A part of life I didn't understand… until now."
He tried to move, to reach out, to grab some solid thing—some anchor in the world—but found his hands passing through the air as though it were water. He laughed softly, a hollow, self-aware sound. "I'm learning to float," he said. "Not as a victim… but as someone observing, someone… surviving."
Hours passed like this. Minutes folded into themselves. Devendra scanned every sensation, every memory, every faint echo in his mind. The outside world seemed distant but tangible, like a reality seen through glass. He could touch it, but not fully enter.
And yet, despite the disorientation, there was a subtle peace. The chaos of his childhood fears, the relentless loops of dread, were no longer immediately violent. They existed, yes, but they no longer controlled him.
He opened his eyes slowly. The river still rippled, sunlight glinting across its surface. Devendra exhaled, feeling the weight of his own mind pressing gently against him. "I am here," he whispered. "Even if only halfway. Even if I'm still… floating."
And in that quiet, suspended state, he understood something crucial: he didn't need to confront every shadow, didn't need to chase every fragment. Some currents could be observed, acknowledged, and left to flow alongside him. Some parts of the past could simply drift, without pulling him under.
For the first time in years, Devendra allowed himself to float.