She stayed upright, out of spite or stubbornness—no one was sure. Her legs twisted into bark mid-run, rooting her where she’d last tried to leave. The forest liked her too much to let her go. Roots slithered into soil, curling around secrets and old letters no one had read.
She didn’t scream when her skin gave way to lichen. She just blinked slower.
Autumn dressed her in dying gold. Her arms, stripped to bone, stretched like branches toward a sky that never answered. One hand still clutched a spider, thin as breath, spinning webs between her fingers. It had made a home of her silence.
A snail, clueless or faithful, climbed the bark of her shin with the patience of someone who’d seen this before. At the base of her roots, tucked like a forgotten prayer, a skull grinned up at her. Not menacing. Familiar. She would have wept, but her tears had dried the day the birds stopped singing her name.
Still—she remained. And if you pressed your ear to her ribs, you might hear it. Not sorrow. Not longing. Just a thread. Trembling. Unbroken.
