why do you cry so, child?

The forest was never meant to be seen. No one was supposed to wander this deep, where the trees knelt like old men, their bark peeling off in thick sheets, pooling at their bases like old skin.

She had only come here because it was the only place left untouched by the world. It was supposed to be quiet, still, a place to find peace.

But peace was a lie.

The ground was too soft, as if something beneath it was breathing, shifting—alive. It made her steps uneven, swallowed by the earth, tugging at her heels like it wanted to drag her back into the dark.

A cold, moist air clung to her skin, and the leaves, heavy with rot, scraped against her face like hands.

“Why do you cry so, child?”

It wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t the trees. She knew the voice now. It was the forest itself. She could feel it—rattling inside her bones, slithering in her veins.

She had always known something was wrong here, but she had ignored it. She had to. There was no other way to move forward.

The deer—if it was a deer—was ahead of her now. Its body was too long, its legs too thin, its shape wrong in ways that made her eyes burn. Its eyes were like holes—black, hollow pits that absorbed the light around them, pulling in all the color, the life, the meaning. The creature didn’t move, it didn’t need to. Its presence was enough.

It wasn’t waiting. No, it was watching her.

The whispers were getting louder now, thickening the air until it was almost solid. They came from everywhere, from the trees, from the air, from the earth itself.

They weren’t words—they were just sounds, vibrating against her skull, so close that she could feel them crawl through her teeth.

“Do you remember? Do you know what you’ve done?”

She closed her eyes, but the darkness wasn’t better. No, the darkness was the worst part, the part that made her head spin, the part that pulled the air from her lungs.

It was the tree. It was always the tree. The way its roots sprawled across the earth, like veins, like the blood of something alive and hungry. She had come here to escape it, but it was here, too, inside her.

“It was never about running away, child. It’s always been here. In you. With you. Watching you.”

The earth shook. She fell to her knees, hands scraping against the soil, but it wasn’t soil anymore. It was flesh. It pulsed under her fingers, like it was breathing, a slow, rhythmic pulse that was all wrong.

The bark on the tree cracked and groaned, stretching, like it was going to open. Split open, like it had a mouth. A voice.

“Come closer.”

She didn’t want to. She couldn’t. But she did. She could feel her feet moving, dragging her toward the tree, toward the voice, toward the thing that was waiting for her.

She could smell it now—rotting flesh and wet leaves, like decay had its own scent, like it had grown so used to it that it made her want to vomit.

She reached out, her fingers trembling. The bark of the tree was wet, slick with something that wasn’t sap, something that stuck. Her hand slid down, following the grotesque ridges, until she felt it—the heartbeat. It was the tree’s heartbeat, but it was her heartbeat, too.

And then she heard it.

A scream. Not from the deer. Not from the trees. From her. Her own voice. Echoing around her, bouncing off the trees, vibrating through her skull.

“You’ve always been here, child.”

The deer moved now. Slowly, fluidly. It reached out, its head dipping low, its black eyes locked onto hers. It wasn’t looking at her anymore. It was looking through her. Its breath was cold, and she could feel it on her skin, feel it entering her lungs, freezing her from the inside out.

“It’s not over. It’s never over.”

Her vision blurred. The edges of the world bent, like she was seeing the forest from a dream—a nightmare. The trees closed in, their limbs twisting, their shapes contorting into figures that weren’t meant to exist.

And she saw it then.

The roots. They weren’t roots anymore. They were hands. And they were reaching for her.

“The tree wasn’t the monster, child. You were always the thing it feared.”

REMI.