From that mont on... I no longer really knew how. But I had ended up reaching a platform. A flat space. Stable. A stopping point. Or maybe just a pause offered out of pity.
I didn’t know if I had gotten there by walking. Or crawling. Or maybe... both. At tis. Alternating.
I didn’t rember the last steps. My body had moved, that was all I could say. It had slid, pulled, dragged what was left of here. Without understanding whether it was I who was moving forward, or if sothing had pushed there.
I floated between two breaths. Suspended. Neither alive, nor entirely broken. Just there, held by a strange inertia, carried by a refusal too ancient to still have a na. A resistance without form, without scream, without real strength — but still standing.
Sothing in said no. Not with words. Not with a thought. A deeper no. Older. That of a being who falls but does not yield. That of a mory that refuses to die entirely, even when everything else already has.
And then... they were there. The moss cushions. The ones from the beginning. The sa, or maybe others, but I imdiately recognized that spongy softness, that vegetal warmth, that silent promise of a rest without judgnt.
This ti, I didn’t resist. I didn’t pretend. I didn’t make myself beg. I fell into them. Completely. Body, breath, thought. Without struggle. Without grace. Like one collapses into sothing softer than oneself, not out of trust, but because there is nothing else left to oppose. Because everything has already been given. And the ground, at least, asks for nothing.
My muscles gave out before my mind. They loosened on their own, without warning, as if they had been waiting for this mont to finally betray their duty. I sank into the moss like into a forgotten womb, warm, alive, almost maternal — a refuge without form, without promise.
And I thought I slept. Just for a mont. A suspended heartbeat. A slide into sothing blurrier, softer. But true sleep didn’t exist here. Not in this world. What ca was not rest. It was sothing else. A disguised mory. A slow illusion, slow like an ancient poison one breathes in without realizing. Nothing extinguished. Everything remained. Lurking. Waiting for to see it.
She returned. First... a shiver. Light. Insidious. Like an invisible hand brushing the nape of the neck, without really touching it. Then a beat of warm air, irregular, almost organic — as if sothing was breathing too close to , without breath, without body, but present nonetheless.
The space around seed to contract imperceptibly, to welco an absence made tangible. I hadn’t seen her. Not yet. But I already knew. It was her. Her again. Always her.
Then... a note. A single one. Scattered, floating, lost in the air like an ancient sigh soone forgot to silence. It barely vibrated, but it vibrated true. Tired. Out of breath. Too human to belong to a dream, too filled with life to be just a hallucination.
It didn’t co from far away. It ca from nearby. From intimate. From a place I had never known how to na but that I recognized, despite myself. A note... like a hand extended from a world believed to be closed.
And yet... it wasn’t a sound of the world. Nothing the air, the ground, or the sky could have produced. It was a song. Low. Broken. A hoarse voice, almost extinguished, scraped against the walls of sothing older than pain. It didn’t rise, it crawled. As if each syllable had to cross a chasm. As if singing was an act of survival. It wasn’t a lody. It was a presence. A wound that speaks. And despite myself... I listened to it. Because it carried sothing I recognized. Sothing that, deep down, may have always waited for .
That voice... I knew it. Not with my head. Not with mories. With sothing older. More buried. I knew it from before. Even before I had understood what being consoled ant. Even before I had known that one day, maybe, soone could lay a hand on a pain without making it bleed.
It was a voice that belonged to a space I had never been able to na. But that my body, it, had never forgotten. A voice woven into the silence of childhood, where no language is enough.
She sang. Without words. Without refrain. Just a series of sounds spun in a low voice, as if woven from a love too deep, too ancient, to be expressed otherwise. A love that cannot be nad, that cannot be spoken without betraying it.
It was a formless murmur, a sacred stamr, from a place without language, without logic — a place where one loves simply because one has never learned to do anything else. A lullaby without words, born of the need to hold, to soothe, to be there. Nothing more. Nothing less.
And my body... began to react. Without my will. Without my control. My eyelids trembled, as if shaken from within by a mory too heavy to stay buried. My jaw tensed, teeth clenched not out of will, but out of defense, out of fear of letting out what was rising. My stomach tightened slowly, painfully, as if trying to contain an ancient scream, a scream that had never been let out.
Everything in was closing... or opening. I didn’t know. Only that this voice, this song, awakened sothing I thought was dead. And that, slowly, was returning.
— No, I whispered.
My voice was almost inaudible, swallowed by the air, by the fog, by myself. It wasn’t a violent no. Not a revolt. It was older, more fragile. A refusal barely ford, coming from a place in I didn’t dare look at. As if that single word, slipped into the silence, was enough to make everything tremble.
I didn’t even know what I was saying no to. The voice? Love? The possibility of being comforted? Or the child, there, against , whose breath reminded I was still alive. Maybe that no... was to myself. To what I was becoming. To what I had always been.
But the song didn’t listen to . It didn’t back down, didn’t fall silent, didn’t bend under my refusal. It continued. Relentlessly. Not with force. Not like an attack. But with that implacable gentleness of things that have always existed.
It seeped, note after note, into the oldest fibers of my being, like a murmur from before my birth, before fear, before even form. It didn’t want to convince. It didn’t want to force. It only wanted to be there. Present. To persist.
As if, whatever I said, it had always known I would need it. That this mont would co. And that it... would not leave.
I covered my ears. Brutally. Like a survival reflex. As if my own hands could stop the inevitable, stifle that song too ancient to be fought any other way.
I curled up, back bent, knees to my chest, reduced to the gesture of a lost child, naked, trapped in a reality too full. I bit my lip until it bled. Not to punish myself. But to remind myself I was still here. That I still had a body. A limit. A concrete pain to oppose what was invading .
But even that... wasn’t enough. The song passed through everything. My flesh. My bones. My refusals. As if it wasn’t ant for my ears, but for sothing lower. Deeper. Barer.
But the voice... it was already in . It had never been outside. It didn’t co from the world, nor the air, nor the mist. It ca from farther away. From lower down. From the exact place where I had stopped existing. Where sothing in had broken for the first ti, silently, without witness.
A place I had covered in layers of silence, of forgetting, of anger. But she, she rembered. She still lived there. And now, she was rising, slow, gentle, but implacable — as if she had always been waiting for . Not to judge. Not to help. Just... to remind .
At that mont, the child, lying on my stomach, slowly lifted his eyes. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even really move. But his gaze... his gaze was there, full, open, inevitable. And I knew he was listening, too.
Not to the song. Not to its invisible notes. But to . What I was doing. What I wasn’t doing. He understood. Not with words. Not with analysis. With that raw lucidity of beings who cannot be lied to.
He saw that I was refusing. That I was still rejecting. That I was fleeing. Once again. Still. Always. And in his eyes... there was neither bla nor anger. Just a silent truth. A presence that reminded I was no longer alone with my refusals. That now, each of them had a witness.
— Shut up, I breathed.
My voice was just a breath, a rasp escaping between clenched teeth, too weak to impose anything. Of course, the voice didn’t obey . It didn’t even waver. It continued, intact, indifferent, gentle and implacable.
It had never been there to listen to . It had never sung to be cut short. It sang for . Specifically. For what I was. For what I had forgotten I was.
It sang because I was here, now, reduced, trembling, unable to silence what lived within . It sang to remind that the very fact of wanting to flee proved I was still hearing. That sothing in was not entirely dead.
Despite everything... despite the fact that I had to move forward, despite that certainty planted deep inside — the one that I had to change, to continue, to survive for sothing or soone — I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t anymore.
It was there, yes, that desire to move forward, that inner cry, sincere, burning, almost pure... but it drowned in sothing else. In a fatigue stronger than will. In a pain so vast it covered all light.
All I really wanted, deep down, was for it to stop. For this infernal loop, this suffering spinning again and again until it crushed , to finally cease. For the noise to fade. For the weight to fall. For the voice to fall silent.
For ... to fade too. Not as an end. But as relief. A soft, total, irrevocable dissolution. A peace that asks for nothing. Nothing more.
Because it was simpler. More bearable. Quieter. Than accepting that one might have been loved, once. Loved sincerely. Despite everything. Despite what I am. A beast. A twisted creature, deford by rage, starved for escape.
Because even today, even now, on the brink of collapse, I keep looking for ease, the laziest, most imdiate escape route.
I know it. I see it. And I don’t look away.
I am scum. Not because I do harm. But because I know exactly when I flee. And I flee anyway. Because it’s easier... than accepting that soone might have, one day, placed a hand on without pulling it away.
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