There was a time when we were all together — in one place, at one moment.
And somehow, that was enough.
Laughter echoed between the buildings, unfiltered and pure. Music spilled from open windows, flowing like a river through cobbled streets, carrying with it the scent of dinners shared and stories told. Words had rhythm, weight, and truth. Emotions weren't hidden — they were sung, shouted, whispered like prayers beneath the trees. That place… it was harmony.
But that time is gone.
Now, only fragments remain — fractured memories, like old film reels playing in sepia tones. Moments I can't touch, people I can't name anymore. This square, once alive, breathes only silence now. Where children used to chase dreams beneath the summer sun, there's only dust and wind.
And there it stands.
The old tree.
Tall and stubborn, its bark weathered and cracked like the lines on a forgotten map. Its branches, once heavy with fruit and laughter, now stretch skyward in brittle defiance. The apples that once fed our hearts and bellies no longer grow. The ground around its roots is bare — no grass, no life.
Yet… something lingers.
As I stand before it, I feel it.
A pulse. A whisper. A breath.
Not of this world — not of memory, or dream. It feels ancient. Like something buried deep beneath the earth had stirred, just enough to be felt. The air shifts, warmer now, charged.
In that moment, I know.
I was right all along.
Maybe now… it's time I return to that old place, and finally face the truth.
With a slow inhale, the boy — no longer a child, not yet a man — stepped forward. His right hand rose, trembling slightly, and rested on the bark. It was rough, yes, but also warm. Ancient. Alive.
He looked up. The branches, though grey, still reached for the sky as if yearning for something beyond. He closed his eyes. Exhaled.
And for the first time in his life, he believed.
Not in fate. Not in stories told by others, passed down like riddles. But in something real. In change. In rhythm. In the possibility that something lost might still be found.
A shift. A beat beneath the silence.
And so it came.
He opened his eyes.
The tree was there — but not the same.
It pulsed with life, as if time itself had chosen to return. A kaleidoscope of colors bloomed around him. The bark shimmered with tones of amber and copper, glowing in the late sun. The leaves had returned — not just green, but vibrant, each one breathing, whispering in the wind. Sunlight poured through the canopy, casting golden patterns on the boy's face.
Insects danced in and out of shadow, drawn by warmth. Unripe fruits, small and shy, peeked from the branches, heavy with promise.
He couldn't move.
A sharp nostalgia hit him — not sadness, but weight. The kind of weight that makes your chest tighten and your eyes sting, not from pain, but recognition.
Slowly, he turned. His breath caught.
Around him, nature had returned. No, not returned — revealed itself. As if it had always been there, hidden behind the grey veil of grief. The air was clearer. Softer. He could hear the faint hum of life all around. The earth beneath him thrummed with quiet joy.
It was beautiful.
Not the kind of beauty that's easy to name — not symmetrical or polished. But raw. Undiluted. A kind of beauty that demanded nothing and gave everything.
It stirred something ancient in him. Something he didn't know he'd buried.
Tears pricked his eyes.
He had rarely been moved by something as simple as nature. Concrete had been his home. Noise, his lullaby. But this — this wasn't just a tree.
It was an answer.
An answer to a question he hadn't dared ask.
The confirmation that his feelings weren't fiction. That the whispers he heard in dreams, the tug in his chest when he passed that square… it had all meant something.
He had not been abandoned.
Not by the world.
Not by the rhythm that had once held his life together.
Not by himself.
He knelt beside the tree, resting his forehead gently against the bark. And for a long time, he said nothing. He simply breathed. Felt. Remembered.
And the tree — it pulsed. Softly. Steadily.
As if it remembered, too.
The truth wasn't in words or visions. It was in the beat. The rhythm that had always existed beneath the silence.
He was not just standing before a tree. He was standing before a threshold.
This… was not his world. Not the one he knew.
And yet, it was the only place he had ever truly belonged.