The morning light was too clean. It made last night feel distant.
She sat up slowly. The hem of her nightdress was still damp with dirt. Her socks were missing. There was a scrape across her palm she didn't remember getting.
Not a dream, then.
She didn't say it aloud. Words felt too heavy for what still clung to her skin.
Downstairs, the kettle already steamed. Her aunt stood by the sink, back turned. The smell of boiled eggs filled the kitchen. Mara moved carefully. She didn't want questions. Her aunt didn't ask anyway.
"Sit," the woman said. Mara did.
There were two plates. Two cups. Two folded napkins. Not warm. Not cold. Just routine. Like every morning.
Her aunt finally turned, set the eggs down, and studied Mara's face for a moment too long.
"Sleep well?" she asked.
Mara nodded. A lie.
Her aunt sat across from her and began to peel an egg. She did it with the precision of someone who thought care was the same as control.
Mara looked down at her scraped hand, then hid it under the table.
The silence stretched into an uncomfortable feeling of watching. The same kind of quiet the orchard had.
She wanted to ask about the figure. The mark. The light.
She didn't.
Instead, she said, "Do you remember when I used to sleepwalk?"
Her aunt's hands paused. Just for a second.
"You were younger then," she said.
"I don't remember when it stopped."
"It didn't" her aunt replied. "You just learned not to get caught."
Mara swallowed. That was not the answer she expected.
The rest? They didn't talk for breakfast.
—
Later that afternoon, Mara sat by the window with a pencil in her hand and a sheet of scrap paper. She stared at the space in front of her for a long time before drawing.
She sketched the mark from the tree. Carefully. One straight line. A curved hook beneath it. Sharp and deliberate. It didn't feel like a name.
She folded the paper and tucked it into the back of a book she never read.
Outside, the orchard didn't look strange at all. No fog. No light. Just rows of trees, bare and brittle in the sun.
She pressed her forehead to the window glass.
A flash of memory tugged at her.
Running through those trees when she was smaller. Laughing. Chasing something. Or someone. Then falling hard enough to scrape her knees. Crying.
Hands lifting her up. Arms that didn't belong to her aunt.
Mara blinked. The memory faded before she could catch the face.
She stepped back from the window.
—
In her room, she found something else she didn't remember leaving.
Her boots. Covered in dried mud. Both pairs.
She only remembered wearing one last night.
Her eyes contracted
She didn't touch them.
She went to bed early, curled under the blanket without turning off the lamp. The mark she'd drawn stayed in her mind, then started thinking "Why the world turned into this?".
At some point in the night, she turned over and reached for the edge of the blanket.
Her fingers brushed something smooth. Cold. Round.
A stone.
No...It's carved?
She held it up to the light.
The same symbol.
Burned into its surface.
She sat up, heart ticking faster. Eyes wider.
She turned her head and saw the window was locked.
But the wind still slipped through the edges of the frame. A wind chanting her name.
And out there, beyond the orchard, something had begun to wait.
Again.