The dream stayed with after I woke up.
Not like a mory, but like sothing pressed into the skin—an afterimage I couldn't blink away. The forest, the sound of the bell, the shimr of the stream... and her. Not a face, not a voice. Just her presence. Like a na I should have known.
I didn't write it down.
I didn't need to.
For the first ti since all of this began, I felt certain of sothing.
She was real.
***
At the university, the air felt heavier than usual. A low fog had settled across the lawns, making the library do disappear above the trees. I walked slower than usual, half-expecting to see the forest again when I turned a corner. But it was just cobblestone, just students, just Berlin.
I spent most of the morning paging through texts I had no interest in. Nothing held . Not kant. Not Freud. Not the latest journals from Vienna. Every paragraph slipped away from . I kept thinking of the bell.
At lunch, Richter found again.
"You disappeared the other day," he said, setting down his tray across from mine.
"I had an appointnt."
"With Eberhardt?"
I nodded.
He studied for a mont. "Did it help?"
I didn't answer. Not directly.
"I saw soone on the tram," I said. "Familiar, but not. Like a painting you recognize before you know the artist."
"Did you speak to them?"
"No. He vanished before I could."
Richter sipped his tea. "You've always been the quiet type, but lately you look like you're halfway between two rooms."
"I feel like I am."
He leaned back. "If you see them again, maybe speak. It's worse not knowing."
***
That night, I returned ho and opened my journal again. The room was quiet, darker than usual. The single lamp on the desk cast a soft, amber ring across the pages. No new words. Just mine—neatly written, underlined only once.
But the page where I'd written to Clara—it looked slightly different. The paper had curled faintly at the edges, like it had been touched by damp air or rested beneath a warm hand too long. The ink had feathered a little, spread delicately outward, as if disturbed not by motion, but by breath.
I leaned in. Examined it closer. It hadn't smudged. Just... softened.
I ran my thumb along the line.
"What do you rember?" I whispered.
The candle flickered—not violently, but as if acknowledging the question. The walls creaked, the way old buildings do when the temperature drops. I turned my head, half-expecting to see soone in the doorway, but there was only shadow.
The clock in the hall struck seven.
I counted the chis.
One. Two. Three. Four...
By eight, my skin had gone cold.
By the eleventh, I stood up.
Twelve.
Thirteen.
And then silence again.
I waited another minute. Nothing followed.
But the stillness felt too exact. Like the room had been listening.
***
The next morning, I returned to Dr. Eberhardt's office.
This ti, there was no assistant at the door. Just the echo of my knock and the slow creak of the hallway beyond. She opened the door herself, hair pulled tighter, expression unreadable.
She ushered in without a word. The sa chairs. The sa warmth. The sa ticking from no visible source.
"Back so soon?" she asked, not unkindly.
"I had another dream," I said.
Her pen waited above the page.
I described the forest. The stream. The bell. I told her I saw a woman, though I never used the na. Not this ti.
She nodded thoughtfully. "Repetition in dreams often signals unresolved thought. The first may be your subconscious returning to a place of origin."
"She felt familiar."
"Perhaps a projection. We assign emotion to symbols to make sense of the undefined."
I didn't respond.
The session ended quietly. She offered no conclusion. Just another question.
"Do you believe she's waiting for you?"
I didn't know how to answer that.
But I left with the sense that I needed to act.
Later that night, I opened my journal again. Clara's na was still there. Beneath it, my question: What do you rember?
I stared at the ink until it blurred.
And then, I made a decision.
I would try to find her.
Reviews
All reviews (0)