I found the lake by accident, on a morning that felt neither real nor fully awake. The hills were wrapped in a pale, peach-colored fog, and the silence was so deep it felt as if something had pressed a gentle finger against the world’s lips.
The water was an impossible shade of blue, as if it held a piece of the night that refused to fade. Above it floated small glowing circles—slow and deliberate—like wandering thoughts that had grown tired of the human mind and escaped into the air.
I stood there, breathing in the stillness. Something about the scene felt arranged—not by nature, but by an unseen hand. The colors, the fog, the spacing of the hills… everything appeared too precise, too intentional, as if someone had curated the morning for an audience of one.
I waited for the loneliness to settle in, the way it usually did when I found myself in quiet places. But instead, the air shifted. A soft vibration drifted across the lake, brushing against me the way a cat might brush a stranger’s leg before deciding whether to trust them.
One of the glowing orbs floated closer.
Not fast, not slow—just moving with the confidence of something that understood time differently, as if the world ran on its own private rhythm and it had no desire to match mine.
“Are you a spirit?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
The orb brightened, then dimmed, like a single syllable made of light.
Suddenly, I remembered an old story my grandmother once told me, about mountains that breathed and lakes that remembered every traveler who stood before them. She said the spirits who lived there were quiet beings, the kind that never interfered unless a person’s heart had grown unbearably heavy.
I wondered how heavy mine looked from the outside.
The orb circled me once, tracing a soft ring of color in the fog around my body. It wasn’t warm or cold—it simply existed, like a hand offered without a command.
“I’m tired,” I admitted.
The hills gave no reply. But the lake hummed again—low, resonant—as if something beneath the surface was acknowledging the truth out loud for me.
For a moment, I thought I saw figures in the mist—small, flickering shapes moving between the trees and the flowered hills. Not dangerous. Just present. Guardians of the shifting light.
I sat down on the damp ground and watched the orb return to the water. It hovered above the center of the lake, pulsing gently, as if inviting me to breathe in time with it.
And I did.
For the first time in months, my mind stopped wandering. The world felt still enough to hold me without folding in the wrong direction.
When I finally stood up, the lights retreated, drifting back into the fog like memories returning to sleep.
I knew I would come back. Not because I wanted answers—I doubted this place had any—but because something here recognized me in a way the real world never quite did.
As I walked away, the lake hummed again, faint and distant.
Like a promise.
Or a reminder.
That the spirits had seen me, and were not yet done.
