One late evening, I stepped out for a walk. The kind where your body moves but your mind lingers elsewhere. Work had wrung me dry. My brain was foggy, and beneath it, something else stirred—a strange ache, like missing a place I’d never get back to.
I thought about childhood—how full it felt, how wide the future once looked. Now, with so much behind me and so little certainty ahead, I wondered: Why do we work so hard? What is it for? I felt lonely. Not just alone—lonely.
Then I saw these trees. Still. Silent. Rooted. And suddenly, it was like they whispered something back. Not answers. But a story.
There were four.
The world never noticed when they gathered.
But some threads wove tighter underground.
No one spoke of what they were.
No names were given.
Only a moment—suspended, unmistakable.
One followed the light until it blurred.
One dissolved into quiet.
One slipped away mid-laugh.
And one stayed—though never quite the same.
No farewells.
Just the slow unfurling of distance,
like branches stretching toward separate skies.
Their story left no map.
But beneath it all—beneath cities, years, silences—
something still binds them.
A memory.
A pull.
A root system buried in time.
And still,
the roots remember—
what even they do not.
Standing there, I realized the trees hadn’t offered answers. They’d reminded me of something deeper: some connections run beneath conscious memory. Some bonds persist long after the visible relationship ends.
Maybe that ache wasn’t homesickness for something lost. Maybe it was my own root system, still reaching toward connections that shaped me in ways I’m only beginning to understand.
The same questions remained, but they felt less urgent. Less like problems to solve and more like mysteries to live with.
Sometimes the most profound conversations happen without words.
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