The Hunter Between Worlds

I woke beneath a violet sky,

where two suns bled into the horizon—

a world neither born nor dying,

but waiting.

They told me what I sought was gone:

a name that once belonged to me,

a whisper caught between heartbeats.

Yet I still followed the scent of memory,

through forests that breathed like living lungs,

through rivers that murmured forgotten prayers.

Each step echoed with something older than desire.

The soil remembered every hunter who failed before me,

their footprints turning to roots,

their hunger feeding the earth.

I carried no bow, no blade—

only the ache of not knowing.

And in that ache, I learned to listen:

the wind speaking in lost tongues,

the stars aligning like ancient runes,

pointing me toward what I once was.

At the edge of the last forest,

I saw it—

not a beast,

but my own reflection,

staring back with eyes hollowed by pursuit.

I reached out,

but it stepped away,

smiling with my mouth,

and whispered, “The hunt was never for me.

It was for the moment you would finally stop.”

Now I rest beneath the twin suns,

hands empty,

heart no longer chasing.

I did not capture what I sought,

but in losing it,

I became whole again.

And so the hunt ends—

not in triumph,

not in failure,

but in understanding:

that every world is a mirror,

and every hunter

is hunted by his own longing.