The storm came fast, the way lies do—without warning and already convinced it was welcome.
Rain flattened the farmland into dark sheets, drumming against tilled soil and half-grown wheat. Wind dragged at the scarecrows until their arms twisted loose, straw bleeding into the mud. Somewhere between thunderclaps, Daisy's mother stood in the doorway of their house, apron soaked through, counting seconds between flashes like it might mean something. Her father said Daisy knew the woods. He said it twice. He didn't look at the treeline when he said it.
Daisy had gone out before the clouds bruised the sky. She'd gone because her friend dared her to see the fox den again, and because Daisy hated the idea of being afraid of a place she walked past every day. That was her defining flaw, though no one called it that. If something scared her, she leaned toward it, chin up, as if courage were a muscle that only grew when embarrassed.
Now the forest no longer looked like something she knew.
Branches thrashed overhead, knitting and unknitting shadows. Rain found its way down her collar, icy and persistent. Her shoes slipped on roots slick with moss, and she laughed once—sharp and breathless—because laughter made the fear hesitate. When the thunder cracked close enough to feel in her teeth, she stopped laughing.
She ran without picking a path. Ferns tore at her stockings. A bird burst from a bush so suddenly she screamed, then clapped a hand over her mouth as if the sound might summon worse things. The air smelled green and electric, like metal after it's been struck.
She told herself she only needed a place to wait it out. A hollow tree. A rock overhang. Anything.
The forest opened all at once.
It wasn't gradual. One step she was tangled in roots and rain, the next she stood in a clearing too clean for the rest of the woods. The grass there lay flat, pressed down in a perfect circle, as if something heavy had rested there and then stood up. Rain fell around the clearing, but inside it, the drops thinned, stuttering like they were forgetting how.
At the center stood a stone archway.
It wasn't ancient in the way ruins are ancient. No moss softened its edges. No cracks ran like veins through the stone. It was intact, precise, wrong. The stones fitted together without mortar, each block the same dull gray, as if cut from a single thought.
And set within the arch was a door.
Wood, dark and unadorned. No handle on this side—just a shallow indentation where a hand might rest. No hinges visible. It stood upright on bare earth, not sunk into the ground, not attached to anything else. It had not been there the last time Daisy crossed this clearing, because the last time she crossed this clearing, there hadn't been a clearing at all.
Thunder rolled, long and low, like something clearing its throat.
Daisy slowed to a walk. Her breath fogged in front of her, though the air wasn't cold. She reached the edge of the pressed grass and stopped, rain slicking her hair to her cheeks. The sensible thing would have been to back away. To mark the place in her mind and run home and tell someone older, someone sturdier, someone who knew the names for things like this.
She didn't.
She stepped into the clearing.
The sound of the storm dulled immediately, as if wrapped in cloth. The air felt thicker here, heavier, pressing softly against her ears. She lifted one foot and then the other, testing, half-expecting the ground to give way. It didn't. The earth was firm, dry beneath the flattened grass.
She stood before the door.
Up close, the wood bore faint lines, not scratches but something like grain that shifted when she moved her head. For a moment, she had the strange certainty that the door was not closed, only waiting.
"I just need to get out of the rain," she muttered, to no one and nothing. Her voice sounded too loud in the hush.
Lightning flashed. For an instant, her shadow stretched across the door—and for that same instant, the shadow didn't quite match her shape. Then the darkness fell back into place.
She hesitated. Fear tugged at her ribs, sharp and insistent. But beneath it was that other thing, the stubborn spark that had carried her into the woods in the first place. If she turned back now, the storm would still be there. The forest would still be loud and wild and watching.
Daisy lifted her hand.
The wood was warm beneath her palm. Not sun-warm. Body-warm.
She pressed.
The door swung inward without a sound.
Light spilled out—not bright, not blinding, but deep, like the glow behind closed eyes. The air beyond smelled nothing like rain or soil. It smelled clean. Empty. Vast. Daisy leaned forward, peering inside, and felt the pull of it immediately, a gentle insistence, the way a held breath invites release.
Behind her, the thunder rose again, closer now, the sky tearing itself open.
She stepped through.
The moment her foot crossed the threshold, the storm's sound cut off entirely. The world behind her dimmed, colors flattening, as if seen through water. Daisy glanced back once, heart hammering, and saw the forest blurred and distant, already unreal.
She turned, reached out, and pulled the door closed behind her.
Outside, the stone archway flickered, just once, like a failing lantern. Vines burst from the soil at its base, winding upward with unnatural speed, leaves unfurling as thunder howled overhead. The rain thickened, hammering the clearing flat, until the arch stood half-hidden in green and shadow, as if it had always been that way.
Inside, the door sealed shut.
The silence on the other side of the door was not empty. It was vast.
Daisy stood still, waiting for the sound of rain to catch up with her, for thunder to bleed through the walls of wherever she'd stepped into. Nothing followed. The hush pressed close, dense and careful, as if the space itself were listening.
There was no floor in the way floors were meant to exist.
Stone steps floated beneath her feet, wide and uneven, suspended in a dark that wasn't darkness so much as depth. They drifted forward in a slow, deliberate line, each one holding steady as she tested her weight, as if approving of her presence. Beneath and above and all around stretched a sky full of stars—but not the cold, distant kind she knew. These were brighter, nearer, their light soft and breathing, like they might dim if she stared too hard.
She swallowed.
"Okay," she whispered, because saying nothing felt worse. Her voice didn't echo. It simply vanished, absorbed by the space like a secret.
The steps led onward, curving gently, and Daisy followed because there was nowhere else to go. With each step, the stars shifted, rearranging themselves in slow patterns that made her dizzy if she tried to follow them. Some glowed white. Others burned gold or pale blue. One flickered red for a moment, then went dark.
She did not know how long she walked. Time here refused to behave. Her legs never tired, yet she had the uneasy sense that she could have been moving for minutes or for years.
Then she saw the tree.
It rose from a floating island of earth ahead, its roots gripping soil that hovered unsupported in the endless sky. A weeping willow, immense beyond sense or scale—its trunk as wide as a cottage, its canopy spilling downward in long, silver-green curtains that brushed the stars themselves. Leaves shimmered softly, catching starlight and bending it, scattering reflections like ripples on water.
The closer Daisy came, the quieter everything grew, until even her breathing felt intrusive.
She stepped onto the island.
The ground was cool beneath her shoes, springy with moss. The air smelled faintly of rain remembered, of old wood and something sweeter she couldn't name. The willow's branches stirred, though there was no wind.
A sound came then—not spoken, not heard with ears alone. It pressed gently into her thoughts, careful and deep.
Little one.
Daisy froze.
Her heart leapt, then settled into a strange, fluttering calm. She looked around wildly, but there was no one else there. Only the tree, its great trunk etched with lines and knots that twisted into shapes the longer she stared—faces half-formed, eyes closed, mouths caught between words.
"Who—" Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat. "Who's there?"
The branches swayed.
I am watching, the voice said, slow and layered, like many voices remembering how to be one. I am dreaming. I am older than the first promise and younger than the last.
Daisy tilted her head, trying to make sense of that. "Are… are you the tree?"
A pause. Long enough that she wondered if she'd offended it.
Among other things, it replied.
She considered this, then nodded, as if that answered something important. "This place is really pretty," she said finally, because the words felt true and safe. "The stars look different here."
They are closer to their names, the tree said.
That didn't help at all, but Daisy smiled anyway. She stepped nearer, reaching out toward the hanging leaves. They recoiled slightly, not in fear, but in awareness.
"What is this place?" she asked. "Did I… did I go somewhere I'm not supposed to?"
The willow's branches dipped, brushing the ground in a slow, deliberate motion.
You went where the door allowed, it said. Few notice it. Fewer still enter.
"Why was it there?" she pressed. "It wasn't there before. I walk that way all the time."
Doors listen, the tree answered. Sometimes they answer.
Daisy frowned, frustration flickering across her face. "That doesn't make sense."
The tree seemed to smile—not with a mouth, but with the soft creak of its trunk, the settling of ancient wood.
Sense is a habit, it murmured. Not a rule.
She kicked at the moss, scuffing her shoe. "Am I dreaming?"
No.
That answer came quickly.
"Am I dead?" she tried next, her voice very small now.
No.
She exhaled, relief loosening her shoulders. "Good. My mum would be really mad."
For the first time, the tree's branches stilled completely.
Little dreamer, it said, and something in its tone shifted—softened, sharpened, both at once. You stand in a place where truths are chosen.
She looked up at the canopy, eyes wide. "Chosen by who?"
By those who ask.
Daisy hesitated. The air felt heavier now, thicker with something unspoken. Far away—very far away—she thought she heard thunder, muffled and angry.
The tree's presence pressed closer.
I have watched worlds grow tired, it said. I have dreamed futures that never came to pass. I have weighed wishes heavier than mountains and lighter than breath.
Its branches leaned inward, forming a sheltering arch above her head.
Tell me, child, the voice asked, gentle and grave, what would you wish for to be your truth?
Daisy blinked. "My truth?"
The thing that follows you, the tree said. The shape your path will take.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. The question felt too big, like trying to hold the sky in her hands. She thought of her home, of the storm she'd run from, of the way her heart always pulled toward things just out of reach.
"I don't really know," she admitted. "I have lots of dreams."
Then choose, the tree said.
Outside the door—far beyond the stars—the sky screamed. Winds tore at rivers, rain swelled streams until they broke their banks. The world shuddered, reacting to a word not yet spoken.
Daisy looked up at the willow, at the watching leaves, the dreaming light caught between branches.
"I wish," she said slowly, carefully, "that all my dreams would come true."
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the stars leaned closer.
The tree shuddered, a deep tremor running through its trunk and into the floating earth beneath Daisy's feet. Its branches rustled, not with wind, but with something like grief—or awe.
So be it, the watcher whispered.
The sound carried outward, rippling through the space like a stone dropped into still water.
And just as suddenly as the storm beyond had raged, it ceased.
Sunlight broke through the clouds outside the hidden archway, warm and ordinary and unaware. Rivers settled back into their beds. The wind stilled. The world exhaled, wounded but intact.
Inside the vast, star-lit place, the steps dimmed. The light softened. The tree's branches fell still once more.
And Daisy would never be heard from again.