"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here I stand at the edge of this moment.

At the edge of this morning.

At the edge of this day.

At the edge of all of time.

The coffee is warm in my hands. Outside the window, the sky is a deep and impossible blue, the kind of blue that only seems to arrive after a night of gentle rain. A robin sings from the flowering crabapple. Somewhere farther away, an oriole offers its liquid notes to the dawn. The world feels suspended between memory and promise.

I have always loved this hour.

Perhaps because, at my age, one becomes aware that every sunrise is both an arrival and a farewell.

I take another sip of coffee and notice that I am no longer alone.

Across from me sits a young man.

Twenty years old, perhaps.

Twenty-one.

Handsome in the uncertain way young people often are, still trying to become themselves. His dark hair falls across his forehead. His shoulders are tense. His eyes carry questions he is afraid to ask.

I know him immediately.

After all, I once wore his face.

He studies me carefully.

"So," he finally says. "This is us?"

I smile.

"More or less."

He glances around the room. The bookshelves. The photographs. The sleeping orange-and-white cat stretched across a patch of sunlight on the floor.

"You got old."

I laugh.

"That happens if you're lucky."

The young man smiles despite himself.

For a moment we simply listen to the birds.

Then he asks the question I know has been waiting inside him.

"Did we make it?"

The answer seems obvious.

I am here.

The coffee is hot.

The morning is beautiful.

Yet I understand what he really means.

Did we survive?
Did we find happiness?
Did we ever stop being afraid?

I set my mug down.

"Yes," I say softly. "We made it."

The relief that crosses his face breaks my heart.

Because I remember.

I remember growing up in an upper Midwestern city where nobody hated me exactly, but nobody spoke about people like me either. Silence has a way of teaching its own lessons.

I remember sitting in church pews and college classrooms, carrying a secret that felt larger than the entire world.

I remember wondering if there was a future for someone like me.

The young man stares out the window.

"I don't know what happens next."

"Neither did I."

"Were you scared?"

"Terrified."

That earns another small smile.

"Good," he says. "At least we're consistent."

Outside, sunlight touches the tops of the pines.

The day is beginning.

"Tell me," he says. "What happens?"

How do you summarize a life?

How do you explain decades to someone who has barely begun?

I think of the handsome young man who first stole my heart.

The memory arrives as clearly as yesterday.

A smile.
A glance.

The sudden certainty that the world had shifted on its axis.

"He broke our heart," I say.

The younger me groans.

"Oh no."
"Oh yes."

"Badly?"

"Magnificently."

He laughs.

The sound is young and bright.

"But we survived?"

"We survived."

I do not tell him how long it took.

Some lessons are learned only by living them.

I think of other men who entered my life afterward. Good men. Kind men. Beautiful men. Men whose names still carry warmth when I remember them.

Some stayed briefly.
Some stayed longer.

Each left something behind.

A story.
A lesson.
A tenderness.
A scar.

The young man watches me.

"Did we find the one?"

I look down into my coffee.

For a moment, I am quiet.

Then I shake my head.

"No."

His disappointment is immediate.

"No?"

"No."

The room grows still.

Outside, the robin continues singing.

"But," I add, "we found something much better."

His eyebrows rise.

"What?"

I gesture toward the window.

"The whole world."

He looks confused.

I understand.

At his age, happiness appears to be a destination.

At mine, it looks more like a journey.

I tell him about the city beside the Pacific Ocean.

About fog rolling over the hills.
About long walks beside the sea.
About discovering a place that felt like home the moment I arrived.

I tell him about bookstores and coffeehouses and friendships that would last decades.

About concerts.
About museums.
About evenings when the city lights shimmered like constellations.
About learning that it was possible to build a life rather than merely inherit one.

I tell him about cats.

Many cats.

Beloved companions who shared apartments and condominiums over the years.

Cats who claimed sunny windowsills as sovereign territory.

Cats who sat beside me through heartbreaks and celebrations alike.

Cats who taught me that companionship often arrives wearing fur and an expression of complete indifference.

That makes him laugh.

"Still cats?"

"Especially cats."

The orange-and-white cat opens one eye, decides we are not discussing anything important, and returns to sleep.

The young man grows thoughtful.

"Were we lonely?"

There it is.

The question beneath all the others.

The question he has carried for years.

I take my time answering.

"Sometimes."

He nods.

Perhaps he expected that.

"But loneliness and solitude are not the same thing."

He waits.

"I have lived alone for many years," I continue. "That was often a choice. Not a sentence. Not a failure. A choice."

Outside, a breeze stirs the leaves.

"I've had regrets."

"Everyone does."

"I've lost people."

"Everyone does."

"I've said goodbye to places I loved."

"Everyone does."

The young man lowers his gaze.

"But?"

I smile.

"But I have also been surrounded by love."

I think of old friends.

Of chosen family.
Of neighbors.
Of laughter shared over coffee.
Of conversations that stretched long into evenings.
Of letters.
Of phone calls.
Of kindness freely given.
Of every person who helped shape the life I now inhabit.

"I have rarely been unloved," I say.

The room becomes quiet.

A quiet that feels like understanding.

The sun has climbed higher now.

Light spills across the floor.

The young man studies me carefully.

One last question remains.

I can see it in his eyes.

"Would you do it again?"

The answer comes without hesitation.

Every heartbreak.

Every mistake.

Every risk.

Every triumph.

Every goodbye.

Every sunrise.

Every cat.

Every city.

Every friendship.

Every wonderful man.

Every ordinary and extraordinary day.

"Yes," I say.

His expression softens.

"All of it?"

"All of it."

Outside, the world glows with the golden certainty of morning.

The young man rises from his chair.

For a moment we simply look at one another.

Then he smiles.

Not because all his questions have been answered.

But because he finally knows there will be answers.

And that they will be worth waiting for.

A moment later, he is gone.

Only sunlight remains.

I pick up my coffee and walk to the window.

The birds are singing.

The sky is impossibly blue.

The day stretches before me.

Behind me lies a life I would not trade.

Ahead of me lies whatever morning remains.

And here I stand.

At the edge of this moment.

At the edge of this morning.

At the edge of this day.

At the edge of all of time.
​
Grateful.

~Wylddane

"Some flowers bloom for the light.
Others bloom for the darkness.
And a rare few bloom for the things we have tried to forget."  ~Anon

The bell above the door of Bean & Birch chimed softly as Tom and Erica stepped inside.

The Saturday morning coffee crowd was already assembled around the long oak table near the windows.

Maren stood behind the counter steaming milk, while Lucy arranged pastries beneath the glass display. Sam was studying the weather forecast on his phone. Toby was arguing cheerfully with Martha about whether ravens possessed a sense of humor.

"They do," Martha insisted.

"They absolutely do not," Toby replied.

"They absolutely do."

At that moment Tom set his coffee on the table and cleared his throat.

"I've got a story."

The room immediately fell silent.

"Is it true?" asked Sam.

Tom shrugged.

"I don't know. But it happened close enough to Lone Pine that it might be."

That was enough.

The mugs were lifted. Pastries were forgotten.

Tom began.


Thirty years ago, before the highway was widened and before half the summer cabins had been built, there stood a forgotten Victorian estate deep within the northwoods.

Locals called it Blackthorn House.

The mansion sat alone atop a granite ridge overlooking a small lake that did not appear on most maps. Its owner had been a wealthy German horticulturist named Wilhelm Hartmann, who arrived in Wisconsin after the Second World War carrying little more than trunks of books, journals, and strange seeds collected from distant corners of Europe.

For decades Hartmann lived alone.

Few people ever visited.

Fewer returned twice.

When Hartmann vanished in the autumn of 1973, no one knew exactly what had happened. There was no body.

Only an empty house.

And an enormous rhododendron growing behind it.

A rhododendron unlike any anyone had ever seen.


Twenty years later the estate was purchased by a botanist named Dr. Oliver Voss.

He had spent years studying rare flowering plants.

The moment he saw the enormous shrub rising behind the mansion, he knew it was extraordinary.

The plant stood nearly fifteen feet high.

Its twisted trunk resembled blackened driftwood.

Its leaves were dark emerald during daylight.

But at sunset they deepened to a shade so dark they appeared almost black.

Most remarkable of all were the flowers.

They opened only at midnight.

Never before.
Never after.

Their petals unfurled like velvet stars.

Deep purple.
Almost black.

And from them came a fragrance unlike any perfume on earth.
Sweet.
Rich.
Intoxicating.
Irresistible.


The first night Oliver smelled the blossoms, he dreamed of his childhood.

Not memories.
Dreams.
Or so he believed.

He saw his mother standing in a kitchen long demolished.
He heard her voice.
Smelled fresh bread.
Felt sunlight through a window that no longer existed.

The next morning he awoke weeping.
The memory felt more vivid than reality.
More real than the present.

Then strange things began happening throughout the nearby countryside.

A retired fisherman was found wandering along the lake shore at dawn calling for his younger brother, who had drowned forty years earlier.

An elderly woman spent an entire night searching her attic for a wedding dress she had worn in 1958.

Another man became convinced his deceased wife was waiting for him at the train station in Minneapolis.

The incidents multiplied.

Every victim lived within reach of the midnight wind carrying the scent of the mysterious blooms.

Oliver began keeping records.

The pattern was undeniable.

The perfume awakened memories.

Not pleasant recollections alone.

Regrets.
Sorrows.
Unfinished grief.
Hidden guilt.

Every wound a person had spent a lifetime burying.

The flower forced them to relive it.

Then Oliver found Hartmann's journals.

Hundreds of pages.

Written in German.

Many passages were damaged by moisture and age.

Night after night Oliver translated them.

The entries grew increasingly frantic.

Hartmann described acquiring an unusual rhododendron from a remote valley in northern Scandinavia.

The local Sámi people had warned him never to cultivate it.

They called it the Polarnacht.

The Polar Night.

According to legend, the plant fed not on soil or water alone, but on memory itself.

The more sorrow surrounding it, the larger it grew.

The older it became, the stronger its influence.

One final entry chilled Oliver to the bone.

It does not reveal memories.
It consumes them.
First it returns them.
Then it takes them away forever.

Oliver froze.

He could no longer remember his father's face.

The realization struck him like lightning.

He knew he had a father.

He knew he had loved him.

But the face was gone.

Vanished.

A blank space where a lifetime memory should have been.

Then another disappeared.

His first day at university.

Gone.

His grandmother's voice.

Gone.

The Polarnacht was feeding.

The next bloom would occur during the coming full moon.

According to Hartmann's journal, once the plant reached maturity, a final flowering would erase every memory within its reach.

Entire lives.

Gone.

Not death.

Something worse.

A living emptiness.


Hartmann's final pages revealed a solution.

The plant's roots extended into a natural cavern beneath the estate.

At its center lay a spring rich in unusual minerals.

The water sustained the rhododendron.

Destroy the spring and the plant would die.


The following night Oliver descended into the cavern.

A storm raged above.

Lightning flashed through cracks in the stone.

The scent of blossoms hung everywhere.

The deeper he ventured, the harder it became to remember why he was there.

His own name seemed distant.

His purpose faded.

Faces drifted away like fog.

He stumbled forward guided only by Hartmann's journal clutched in trembling hands.

At the cavern's center he found the spring.

And surrounding it--
roots.

Thousands of roots.

Pale and writhing like living veins.

Each pulsed faintly with silver light.

As though carrying memories through the darkness.


Oliver shattered the spring's stone basin with a sledgehammer.

Water exploded outward.

The cavern shook.

The roots convulsed.

A sound echoed through the darkness.

Not a scream.
Not quite.

More like a thousand forgotten voices speaking at once.

Then silence.


By dawn the flowers had withered.

By noon the leaves had begun falling.

Within a week the great rhododendron stood dead beneath the pines.


For years afterward Oliver feared what he might have lost.

There were gaps in his memory.

Small missing pieces.

Moments he could never recover.

Yet the terrible forgetting had stopped.

The countryside returned to normal.

Life continued.


Tom paused and took a sip of coffee.

Nobody spoke.

Even Toby appeared unsettled.

Finally Martha leaned forward.

"So what happened to Hartmann?"

Tom smiled.

"I wondered the same thing."

"And?"

Tom reached into his coat pocket.

He withdrew a folded newspaper clipping.

Yellow with age.

Across the top was a headline from 1974.

MISSING BOTANIST FOUND ALIVE.

The article described an elderly man discovered wandering near Duluth.

He knew how to speak.

How to eat.

How to walk.

But he could not remember his name.

His family.

His past.

Anything.

Not one single memory.

The article listed the man's name.

Wilhelm Hartmann.

Tom folded the clipping.

The table sat silent.

Outside the windows of Bean & Birch, sunlight shimmered through fresh rhododendron blossoms growing beside the parking lot.

Then Erica quietly pointed toward them.

"Tom?"

"Yeah?"

"Those weren't blooming when we came in."

Everyone turned.

The flowers swayed gently in the breeze.

And for the briefest moment, Martha could have sworn she smelled a faint, sweet fragrance drifting through the open door.

A fragrance that seemed oddly familiar.
​
Though she could not remember why.

The End...

~Wylddane




​

“What we love beyond reason rarely leaves us entirely.”

By late October the river town of Blackwater Bend had already surrendered to the long gray sleep of autumn.

Fog drifted low across the marshes each morning. Wind stripped the remaining leaves from the cottonwoods along the riverbank, sending them skittering through empty streets like fleeing birds. Most evenings, rain whispered against windows and rooftops with the soft persistence of memory itself.

It was precisely the kind of place Daniel Mercer had sworn he would never return to again.

Yet there he stood beneath a bruised twilight sky, one hand resting upon the rusted iron gate of Bellwether House.

The estate rose beyond the overgrown hill like the corpse of another century.

Its widow’s walk leaned slightly toward the river. Black vines climbed the cracked stone walls. Hundreds of shattered greenhouse panes caught the fading light and reflected it like broken ice.

Daniel exhaled slowly.

His aunt Eleanor—his mother’s estranged sister—had died without warning three weeks earlier and left him the property along with everything inside it.

Including the stories.

Especially the stories.

Even as children, everyone in Blackwater Bend knew the legend of Helena Vale and the Yellow Rose Begonia.

A flower that should not exist.
A flower that bloomed before tragedy.
A flower that glowed like candlelight in darkness.

And according to town lore, anyone foolish enough to seek it out eventually lost something they loved.
Daniel had spent twenty years dismissing the tale as small-town superstition.

But now, standing before Bellwether House as rain drifted through the dying gardens, he could not deny the strange heaviness pressing against his chest.

It felt less like arriving somewhere.
And more like being remembered.

The house smelled of dust, old paper, and damp wood.

Eleanor had apparently touched nothing for decades.

Books crowded every shelf. Yellowed botanical sketches covered the walls. Glass-domed terrariums sat forgotten beneath layers of cobwebs. A grandfather clock ticked faintly despite no visible mechanism still functioning.

Daniel lit a lamp and wandered slowly through the rooms.

Outside, thunder rolled across the river valley.

He found Helena Vale’s journals just after midnight.

They were hidden inside a locked escritoire in the library beneath stacks of decaying sheet music and pressed flowers.

The leather covers were soft with age.

Inside, Helena’s handwriting flowed sharp and elegant across the pages.

October 3rd, 1951.
There are moments when grief alters the shape of the world.

October 11th.
The flower responded again tonight. It opened only after I spoke his name aloud.

October 28th.
God forgive me. I believe it remembers him.

Daniel frowned.

Rain battered the windows harder now.

The lamp flickered.

And somewhere deep within the house came the sound of glass breaking.

Daniel froze.

Another sound followed.

Footsteps.

Slow.

Measured.

Somewhere below him.

“Hello?”

No answer.

Only the storm.

Daniel grabbed the lamp and moved carefully into the hallway.

The staircase descended into darkness.

At the bottom, moonlight spilled faintly across the foyer through the tall front windows.

No one stood there.

But the greenhouse door at the rear of the house hung open, rocking gently in the wind.

The greenhouse was enormous.

Or what remained of it.

Nature had reclaimed much of the structure long ago. Moss crept across broken stone paths. Ferns erupted through cracked tiles. Dead vines hung like ropes from iron beams overhead.

Rain dripped steadily through shattered ceiling glass.

Daniel swept the lamp forward.

And stopped breathing.

At the very center of the greenhouse stood a single flowering plant.

Its blossoms glowed pale gold in the darkness.

The petals spiraled delicately like miniature yellow roses.

Beautiful.
Impossible.
The Yellow Rose Begonia.

Daniel stepped closer.

The flowers seemed almost luminous, their soft amber light breathing gently within the storm-dark ruin.

And suddenly--

A woman appeared beyond them.

Not fully.
Not entirely flesh.
More like moonlight shaped into memory.

She stood near the far wall in a pale dress, one hand resting against the iron frame of the greenhouse.

Dark hair.
Sad eyes.
Helena Vale.

Daniel’s mouth went dry.

The figure regarded him silently.

Then slowly raised one finger toward the journals tucked beneath his arm.

A warning.
Or perhaps a plea.

The greenhouse door slammed violently behind him.

Daniel spun.

A man stood there holding a revolver.

Tall. Expensively dressed despite the rain. Silver-haired.

Arthur Vane.

Daniel recognized him immediately from Eleanor’s letters—a collector of rare botanical specimens who had spent years trying to purchase Bellwether House.

“You found it,” Vane whispered.

His eyes gleamed feverishly.

“My God…”

The storm intensified overhead.

Lightning flashed white across the greenhouse.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Daniel said quietly.

“Oh, but I should.” Vane stepped forward slowly. “Do you have any idea what this is worth?”

Daniel glanced toward Helena’s fading figure.

She was watching Vane now.

Not with fear.

With sorrow.

Vane smiled thinly.

“They say the flower reveals what the heart longs for most.”

Another flash of lightning.

And for the briefest moment Daniel saw someone standing beside Vane.

A woman.
Young.
Laughing softly.

Gone an instant later.

Vane staggered.

“No…” he whispered.

His hands trembled violently now.

“She’s here…”

The greenhouse began to groan around them.

Iron beams shrieked in the wind.

Glass rained from above.

Helena’s figure moved suddenly toward Daniel.

Not walking.

Gliding.

The flowers burst brighter around her.

And Daniel understood.

The house was not haunted by rage.

It was haunted by longing.

By a grief so immense it had rooted itself into wood, soil, and stone.

Helena had created the flower while trying to hold death itself at bay.

And Bellwether House had never recovered.

“Leave!” Daniel shouted.

But Vane stepped deeper into the greenhouse instead, tears running openly down his face now.

“She came back…” he whispered. “Evelyn…”

The roof gave way.

With a deafening roar, ancient beams collapsed in a storm of glass and fire as lightning struck the greenhouse ceiling.

Daniel barely escaped.

He stumbled into the rain as flames erupted behind him, swallowing vines, journals, blossoms, and shattered glass in roaring gold.

And for one impossible instant--

He saw Helena Vale standing calmly within the inferno.

Smiling.
Not trapped.
Released.
Then the greenhouse collapsed entirely.

By dawn, Bellwether House was little more than smoke and ruins beneath a cold silver sky.

Arthur Vane’s body was never found.

The townspeople would whisper about that for years.

Daniel left Blackwater Bend two days later.

He carried almost nothing away with him.

No journals.
No flowers.
No proof.

Only memory.

The following spring, Daniel rented a small cottage overlooking the sea several states away.

He wrote again for the first time in years.

Stories mostly.

Strange stories full of rain and ghosts and forgotten gardens.

One evening near sunset, while watering the plants outside his porch, he noticed something unusual blooming beside the steps.

A flower he had never planted.

Soft golden petals.

Rose-shaped.

Glowing faintly in the dying light.

Daniel stood perfectly still as ocean wind moved gently through the garden.

Then slowly—almost reverently—he smiled.
​
And somewhere far away, beyond memory and storm and sorrow, a woman’s laughter drifted softly through the dusk like rain against greenhouse glass.

~Wylddane

“Some souls come back to us wearing different faces, but loving us in exactly the same way.”

There are some souls who enter our lives so quietly, so naturally, that we do not at first understand we are standing in the presence of something eternal.

The summer Lassie came into my life, the world still felt enormous and mysterious. I was ten years old, living in the Northwoods of Wisconsin then, in that strange country between childhood innocence and the first shadows of growing older. The days smelled of fresh-cut grass, lake water, and sun-warmed sidewalks. Bikes lay abandoned in yards until dusk. Baseball games stretched endlessly beneath amber evening skies. And somewhere in the middle of that bright and ordinary world, there was Lassie.

She was not a collie like the television dog. She was smaller, softer somehow, with silky ears, intelligent eyes, and a white-and-golden coat that shimmered in sunlight like wheat moving in a summer breeze. But to me she was my Lassie, and that was enough.

From the very beginning, we belonged to one another.

She followed me everywhere—not because she had to, but because she chose to. Down dirt paths. Across schoolyards in summer. Into nearby woods where sunlight filtered green through maple leaves. If I climbed a hill, she climbed it beside me. If I sat quietly beneath a tree nursing the bruises of childhood disappointments, she pressed herself against me without a sound, as though she understood the secret ache that sometimes lives inside lonely boys.

And perhaps she did.

At night, when thunderstorms rolled across Wisconsin skies and rain lashed against the windows, she slept beside my bed. Sometimes I would reach down into darkness just to feel the reassuring softness of her fur. The instant my hand touched her, her tail would thump gently against the floor. I’m here, that sound always said.

Years passed the way years always do—silently at first, then all at once.

The seasons changed. Childhood faded. Friends drifted away like leaves on rivers. The world widened.

But through all of it, Lassie remained.

She was there for first heartbreaks and family sorrows. There for lonely afternoons when I felt misunderstood by nearly everyone else in the world. There during those uncertain teenage years when emotions become storms no one teaches you how to navigate.

She never asked questions.

She simply loved.

And then one autumn morning, when the trees had just begun to burn gold and crimson, she was gone.

There are griefs people speak of politely, almost ceremonially. And then there are griefs that take up residence inside the soul.

Losing Lassie was the first time I understood that love could leave an emptiness behind so vast it echoes.

For weeks afterward, I still listened for the click of her nails against the kitchen floor. I still expected to see her waiting at the door when I came home. Sometimes, half asleep, I could have sworn I felt the weight of her beside the bed.

But life moves relentlessly forward.

Eventually adulthood arrived in full. I moved away from Wisconsin. The lakes and snowfalls of my childhood gave way to the rolling hills and sunlight of California. I built a different life in the San Francisco Bay Area—a life of work, responsibilities, friendships, dinner parties, traffic, deadlines, and all the complicated machinery of growing older.

And yet, every now and then, usually in quiet moments, I would think of her.

Not with sadness anymore.

With longing.

Then came Pina.

Dear friends of mine had adopted a puppy—a tiny thing with bright eyes and feathery ears and enough energy to power the moon. The day I first walked through their door, she came tearing across the room toward me like a bolt of living joy.

Then she stopped.

For one suspended second, the world itself seemed to pause.

She stared directly into my eyes.

Not at me.

Into me.

Her little tail began wagging so hard her entire body twisted sideways. Then she erupted into delighted barking and started running in frantic circles around my legs as though she had been waiting years for me to arrive.

Everyone laughed.

But I couldn’t.

Because somewhere deep inside me, something ancient and wordless had just awakened.

I knelt down slowly.

“Well hello there,” I whispered.

Pina pressed herself against my chest with such fierce affection that it stole the breath from me.

And in that impossible, unreasonable, magical moment, I knew.

Not with logic.

Not with evidence.

With the heart.

Somehow, impossibly, my Lassie had found me again.

Oh, I know how such things sound in the practical daylight of the world. People explain them away. Coincidence. Projection. Emotion. Memory. The human need to reconnect what time has torn apart.

Perhaps.

But there are mysteries in this life that do not fit neatly into language.

Pina and I became inseparable. Whenever I visited, she would explode into joyous chaos the instant she heard my voice. She barked happiness. Spun in circles of pure delight. Climbed into my lap as though no distance or time had ever existed between us.

And always there was that look in her eyes.

Recognition.

As though somewhere behind those dark, shining pupils lived the memory of summer evenings long ago beside lakes and thunderstorms and little boys afraid of growing up.

Then, cruelly, heartbreak returned.

Before she was even a year old, Pina died unexpectedly.

The news struck with the same terrible disbelief as losing Lassie all over again. It seemed impossibly unfair that something so bright, so loving, so filled with joy could vanish so quickly.

For days afterward, I walked through my routines carrying that familiar ache once more.

And yet...

Not entirely grief.

Because by then I understood something I had not understood as a child.

Love does not disappear.

Not really.

It changes shape perhaps. Changes form. Changes seasons.

But certain souls remain woven into us forever.

Years later, when I read A Dog's Purpose, I understood immediately why so many people wept while reading it. The story was fantasy to some readers.

To me, it felt like memory.

Even now, sometimes, I will catch sight of a small golden dog running across a field or hear the happy bark of a puppy somewhere in the distance, and for the briefest instant the years fall away.

I am ten years old again.

The world is still filled with wonder.
​
And somewhere nearby, just beyond the edge of sight, a faithful heart is still running toward me.

~Wylddane

Scene One: The Letter

The bell above the bookstore door didn’t ring so much as sigh.

Jake had meant to fix it weeks ago. Months, maybe. It had once chimed—bright and cheerful—but now it made a tired, metallic whisper that seemed more appropriate somehow.

He stood behind the counter, one hand wrapped around a mug of coffee that had long since gone lukewarm, watching State Street through the wide front window. Outside, November hovered at the edge of something colder. People walked faster now, shoulders tucked in, scarves beginning to appear like quiet declarations of surrender.

“Winter’s thinking about it,” Sam had said that morning.

Jake had laughed. But Sam was often right about things like that.

The bookstore smelled the way it always had—paper, dust, a trace of something woody and old. It wasn’t just a smell. It was a presence. Something that settled into your clothes, your skin. Something that stayed.

Luke said it smelled like memory.

Jake said it smelled like inventory that didn’t move.

They were both right.

The door opened again—another soft sigh—and Luke stepped in, bringing with him a gust of cold air and the faint scent of outside. Real outside. Metal sky and distant snow.

“You’re brooding,” Luke said, not even pausing to take off his coat.

“I’m observing,” Jake replied.

“You’re brooding while observing.”

“That’s just efficient.”

Luke smiled the way he always did when Jake deflected—like he could see the truth and wasn’t in any hurry to drag it into the light. He crossed the store, slow and easy, brushing his fingers along the spines of books as he passed, as if greeting them.

“Coffee?” Jake asked.

“If it’s the same one you’ve been nursing since this morning, I’ll pass.”

Jake glanced at his mug, considered it, then took a sip anyway.

“Still good,” he said.

“Liar.”

“Optimist.”
​
Luke stepped behind the counter, close enough now that Jake could feel the lingering chill of his coat. Without thinking, Jake reached out and brushed a fleck of something—snow? dust?—from Luke’s shoulder

His hand lingered a fraction too long.
Luke noticed.


He always noticed.

Before either of them could say anything about it, the door sighed again.

“God, it smells like a library married a forest in here,” David announced, sweeping inside with theatrical purpose. “And I mean that as both a compliment and a cry for help.”

“Good to see you too,” Jake said.

David dropped his scarf dramatically onto a nearby chair. “I passed three stores on the way here selling candles that smell exactly like this place, except they’re forty dollars and come in minimalist jars.”

“We could pivot,” Jake said. “Turn the place into an overpriced candle boutique.”

“Don’t joke,” David replied. “That’s how these things start.”

The words landed lightly. Too lightly.

Jake turned away before they could settle.

The envelope was still on the counter, half-tucked beneath a stack of invoices. Plain. Official. The kind of paper that didn’t ask for attention because it knew it would get it anyway.

He had opened it an hour ago.

He hadn’t really read it. Not the way something like that needed to be read. He had scanned it, understood it, and then—quietly, efficiently—refused to let it mean anything.

Not yet.

“Okay,” Sam said, appearing as if conjured, his cheeks pink from the cold. “I brought lights.”

He held up a tangled mass of white string lights like a prize.

“Those are aggressively tangled,” Luke said.

“They’re festive,” Sam corrected.

“They’re a cry for help,” David added.

“Everything’s a cry for help with you.”

“That’s because I listen.”

Lisa and Miranda arrived together a few minutes later, bringing with them a shift in the room—a steadiness, a grounding. Coats were shed. Hands were warmed. Someone turned on music low in the background—something soft and familiar.

The bookstore began to fill.

Not with customers. With people.

Jake watched them move through the space—talking, laughing, arguing over where to hang lights, what counted as “too early” for holiday music, whether the place needed a tree or just “a strong suggestion of one.”

This was what the party was supposed to be.

The end-of-season gathering. The we made it through another year moment.

Only this year felt…different.

Smaller, somehow. Thinner.

“Where do you want these?” Sam asked, holding up the lights.

Jake opened his mouth to answer—and that was when David saw it.

The envelope.

He picked it up absently at first, turning it over in his hands. “You getting audited?” he asked lightly.

Jake moved too quickly.

“Hey—don’t—” he started.

Too late.

David had already opened it.

The room didn’t go silent.

But something shifted.

Subtle. Immediate.

Like the moment before snow begins.

David’s expression changed as he read. Not dramatically. Not even obviously. Just enough.

“Jake,” he said, softer now.

Jake forced a smile. “It’s nothing.”

David looked up.

“Doesn’t look like nothing.”

Across the room, Luke had gone still.

Jake felt it then—not the words on the page, not the threat or the timeline or the impossible math of it all.

He felt the room.

The way it had turned toward him without turning.

The way everything warm and easy had suddenly become…fragile.

He shrugged, too casually.

“It’s just…paper,” he said.

No one laughed.

Outside, a few tentative flakes of snow began to fall—light, uncertain, like the sky was still deciding.

Inside, surrounded by the people who knew him best, Jake realized something he hadn’t quite let himself admit until that moment:

This wasn’t about the bookstore.

It never had been.



Scene Two: The Party

By the time the party actually began, the bookstore no longer looked like itself.

Lights—despite their earlier resistance—were strung across the shelves in loose, imperfect lines. Someone had draped a length of red fabric over the front window display that may once have been a scarf or a table runner or something from Miranda’s closet that had simply…evolved. A small, lopsided evergreen—Sam’s “strong suggestion of a tree”—stood near the poetry section, decorated with paper ornaments made from torn book pages.

It was, Jake thought, objectively chaotic.

It was also perfect.

“Tell me we’re charging people for this,” David said, stepping back to survey the room. “Because this is at least a twelve-dollar experience.”

“We’re not charging,” Luke replied.

“We could suggest a donation. A sliding scale of emotional support.”

“David.”

“I’m just saying, if the place is going under, we might as well monetize the aesthetic.”

Jake snorted despite himself, adjusting a string of lights that didn’t need adjusting.

People started arriving just after dusk.

Not a crowd—not in the way it used to be—but enough. Familiar faces. A few new ones. Neighbors. A couple of students who always lingered too long in the philosophy section. Someone brought cheap wine. Someone else brought better wine but didn’t announce it.

Music played low—something warm and slightly nostalgic, the kind that didn’t demand attention but rewarded it.

The space filled.

Voices layered over one another. Laughter rose and fell. Coats piled near the door. Someone knocked over a stack of books and immediately pretended it hadn’t happened.

Jake moved through it all like he always did—easy, joking, present but just slightly out of reach. He poured wine, greeted people, made comments just sharp enough to get a laugh without inviting follow-up.

Luke watched him.

Of course he did.

“You’re doing that thing,” Luke said quietly, catching him near the back shelves.

“What thing?”

“The ‘everything’s fine’ thing.”

Jake shrugged. “Everything is fine.”

Luke stepped closer, just enough to be heard over the hum of the room. “You don’t have to perform tonight.”

Jake met his eyes for a moment—long enough for something honest to flicker there.

“Yeah,” he said lightly. “I kind of do.”

Before Luke could answer, Sam appeared, breathless and glowing with purpose.

“Okay,” he said, “we have a situation.”

“That sounds promising,” David called from across the room.

Sam ignored him. “There’s a guy here—he’s asking a lot of questions.”

“That’s generally what people do in bookstores,” Jake said.

“No, like…questions questions. About the space. The layout. The foot traffic.”

Jake felt something tighten in his chest.

“Where?” he asked.

Sam gestured toward the front.

The man stood near the window, looking just slightly too polished for the room. Early thirties, maybe. Well-dressed in a way that tried to appear casual but wasn’t. He held a glass of wine like it was a prop he hadn’t fully committed to.

Evan.

Though Jake didn’t know his name yet.

He approached slowly, aware—suddenly—of everything. The lights. The people. The way the bookstore felt alive in a way it hadn’t in months.

“Hi,” the man said, smiling brightly. “This is an incredible space.”

Jake nodded. “It has its moments.”

“I’m Evan,” he said, extending a hand. “I’m working with a development group in the area. We’re looking at properties that have…character.”

David appeared at Jake’s shoulder like a summoned spirit.

“Oh, it has character,” David said. “It also has emotional baggage and questionable wiring.”

Evan laughed, a little too eagerly.

“I actually think there’s a lot of potential here,” he continued. “With the right vision, this could be transformed into something really—”

“Else,” Jake finished.

There was a small pause.

“Exactly,” Evan said, missing—or choosing to miss—the edge in Jake’s voice.

Behind them, the party continued. Someone turned the music up slightly. Lisa and Miranda were deep in conversation near the register. Sam was trying to untangle something that had never been truly tangled.

Life. Happening.

Right here.

Jake took a sip of his wine.

“You ever notice,” he said, almost conversationally, “how people use words like ‘potential’ when they mean ‘this isn’t enough yet’?”

Evan blinked. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” Jake said. “You rarely do.”

Luke stepped in then—not interrupting, just arriving. His presence shifted the air.

“We’re actually in the middle of something tonight,” he said, calm and steady. “A party. You’re welcome to stay. Or not.”

Evan hesitated.

For the first time, he seemed unsure of his footing.

“I didn’t realize,” he said. “I thought this was…open.”

“It is,” Luke replied. “Just not for everything.”

Another pause.

Then, quietly:

“I’m sorry,” Evan said.

And this time, it sounded real.

The night went on.

Because that’s what nights do.

The tension didn’t disappear—it settled into the walls, into the spaces between conversations—but something else rose up alongside it.

Defiance, maybe.

Or love.

Or the stubborn insistence that this mattered.

Jake found himself near the poetry section again, watching as Mark handed someone a drink and said something that made them laugh harder than expected. David was telling a story that had clearly grown in the retelling. Sam had finally succeeded with the lights and looked absurdly proud of it.

Luke found him there.

“Hey,” he said softly.

Jake didn’t look away from the room.

“Hey.”

For a moment, they just stood there.

Close. Not touching. Connected anyway.

“It’s good,” Luke said. “Tonight.”

Jake nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

A beat.

Then, quieter:

“I just don’t know how many more of these there are.”

Luke didn’t answer right away.

When he did, it wasn’t with words.

His hand found Jake’s—briefly, simply, steady.

Not a solution.

Not a promise.

Just…there.

Jake exhaled, something in him loosening despite everything.

Across the room, someone called his name. Someone laughed. Someone opened another bottle of wine.

The lights flickered softly against the shelves, against the books, against the faces of the people who had, somehow, become home.

Outside, the snow had started in earnest now—falling thicker, quieter, covering the city in something clean and uncertain.

Inside, the night held.
​
For now.



Scene Three: The Lakeshore

By the time they stepped outside, the music had softened into memory.

Inside, the radio was now playing holiday jazz which drifted low and smooth through the bookstore—voices intimate, almost conspiratorial, wrapping itself around the room like candlelight. It followed Jake out the door in fragments, fading as it met the cold.

The air hit sharp.

Snow had begun to fall in earnest now, no longer tentative but certain, steady. It gathered in Jake’s hair, along the shoulders of his coat, dissolving slowly against the heat of his skin.

He didn’t stop walking.

“Jake.”

David’s voice behind him—closer than expected.

“Hey,” David said again, catching up, breath visible in short bursts. “You want to maybe not do the dramatic exit thing?”

“I’m not doing a dramatic exit,” Jake said, not slowing. “I’m taking a walk.”

“In the middle of your own party. In a snowstorm.”

“Timing is everything.”

David let out a breath that was half a laugh, half something else. “You could’ve told us.”

Jake stopped then.

Not because he wanted to—but because he couldn’t quite keep moving.

“Told you what?” he asked, turning.

“The letter,” David said, holding it up—not accusing, just…there. “This isn’t nothing.”

Jake looked at it like it belonged to someone else.

“It’s just paperwork.”

“Don’t,” David said softly. “Don’t do that thing where you make everything smaller so it doesn’t hurt as much.”

Jake’s jaw tightened.

“I’m not making it smaller. It’s just—” He gestured vaguely, toward the street, the falling snow, the whole indifferent city. “—what it is.”

David stepped closer, lowering his voice.

“They’re taking your place.”

That landed.

Not loud. Not dramatic.

Just…true.

Jake looked past him, toward where the street opened out toward the lake. The glow of streetlights reflected faintly off the water—or what little of it wasn’t already turning to ice.

“It’s a store,” Jake said.

David shook his head. “No. It’s not.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

The lakeshore stretched out before them, dark and wide, the water a heavy gray beneath the falling snow. The wind came off it in slow, cutting waves—not brutal, but persistent. The kind of cold that settled in and stayed.

Jake shoved his hands into his pockets.

“I knew this was coming,” he said finally. “It’s not like it’s a surprise. Rent goes up, sales go down, and suddenly someone wants to sell juice to people who think kale is a personality.”

David huffed a quiet laugh. “Okay, that part’s fair.”

“I just thought…” Jake trailed off.
“What?” David asked.

Jake shook his head.
“That I’d have more time,” he said.

The words hung there.
Simple. Honest.
Cold.

Behind them, footsteps approached—slower, steadier.

Luke.
Of course.

He didn’t say anything at first. Just came to stand beside Jake, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched.

For a moment, none of them spoke.

The lake stretched out. The snow fell. Somewhere in the distance, a car passed, its tires whispering over the road.

“You should’ve told me,” Luke said quietly.
Not angry.
Just…real.

Jake let out a breath.
“I was going to.”

“When?”

Jake didn’t answer.

Luke nodded once, as if that was answer enough.

“This isn’t about the lease,” Luke said after a moment.

Jake gave a small, humorless smile. “It literally is.”

“No,” Luke said gently. “It’s about what happens to you if it’s gone.”

There it was.
The thing Jake hadn’t wanted to name.
He laughed—but it broke halfway through.

“I don’t know,” he said.

And that was it.
No clever line.
No deflection.
No distance.
Just truth.

David looked away, giving them space without leaving.

Luke turned slightly, facing Jake now.
“You’re not losing everything,” he said.

“Aren’t I?”

Jake’s voice was quieter now, but sharper. “Because it kind of feels like that. It feels like I finally figured out where I fit—and now someone’s just…erasing it.”

Luke stepped closer.
“They can’t erase you.”

Jake shook his head. “That’s not what it feels like.”

Snow gathered at their feet, soft and relentless.

Luke reached out then—not dramatic, not hesitant. Just sure.
His hand found the back of Jake’s neck, warm even through the cold.

“You are not that place,” Luke said.
Jake closed his eyes for a second.

“But that place…” he said, softer now, “that’s where I found you.”

That shifted something.
Small. Deep.
Luke’s thumb brushed lightly against his skin, grounding.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Luke said.

Jake opened his eyes.
The snow.
The lake.
David, standing a little distance away, pretending not to listen.
Luke, right here.
Steady.
Real.
He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Okay,” he said.

Not fixed.
Not resolved.
But…something.

Behind them, the faintest echo of music slipped out each time the bookstore door opened—Patricia Barber’s voice drifting into the cold before disappearing again.

Inside, the party was still going.
Inside, life was still happening.

Jake glanced back toward the glow of the store, then back at the lake.

“Let’s go finish this,” he said.

David smiled, relief slipping through. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go see if Sam’s burned the place down with those lights.”

They turned together, heading back through the falling snow—toward warmth, toward noise, toward whatever came next.



Scene Four: The Climax

By the time they stepped back inside, the warmth hit like a memory they hadn’t realized they’d left behind.

The bookstore was louder now.

Not chaotic—but full. Alive in that particular way that only happens when a room crosses some invisible threshold from gathering into something closer to celebration. Glasses clinked. Someone had moved the music up just enough so that the notes of soft jazz drifted more clearly now—low and intimate, threading its way between conversations, wrapping the room in something that felt almost like a secret.

Sam looked up first.

“Oh good,” he said, relief immediate. “You didn’t die in the snow.”

“Disappointing, I know,” Jake replied, shrugging off his coat.

David clapped his hands once. “Everyone relax. The protagonist has returned.”

“Was there ever any doubt?” Lisa said dryly from near the counter.

Miranda handed Jake a glass of wine without asking. “Drink,” she said. “You look like you’ve had character development.”

Jake took it, a small smile breaking through despite himself.

“Tragic,” he said. “I was hoping to avoid that.”

For a moment—just a moment—it almost felt normal again.

Then Jake saw him.

Evan stood near the center of the room now, no longer hovering at the edges. Someone had drawn him in—Sam, probably. Or maybe he’d just stayed long enough for the room to soften around him.

He looked…different.
Less polished. Less certain.
More real.

And then David—because of course it was David—stepped forward.

“So,” he said brightly, far too brightly, “fun fact about our new friend Evan.”

Jake closed his eyes briefly.

“David,” Luke warned.

“What?” David said. “We’re all about transparency now, right? Growth? Emotional honesty?”

“David,” Miranda said, sharper this time.

But it was already too late.

“He works for the people buying the building,” David said.

There it was.
Not shouted.
Not dramatized.

Just…placed in the center of the room like something fragile and impossible to ignore.

The music didn’t stop.
But it seemed to pull back.

Evan went still.

“I didn’t—” he started, then stopped. Reset. “I didn’t come here to—”

“To what?” Jake asked.

His voice wasn’t loud.
It didn’t need to be.
The room had already tilted toward him.

“To spy?” David added helpfully.

“I wasn’t spying,” Evan said quickly. “I didn’t even know—this was just—it was listed as an open event, and I thought—”
“You thought what?” Jake said, stepping closer now. “That you’d come check out the space before you helped turn it into something else?”

Evan’s face flushed—not just from the heat of the room now.

“I didn’t know what this place was,” he said. “Not like this.”

Jake laughed softly.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s kind of the problem.”

A beat.

Evan swallowed.

“I’m not the one making the decision,” he said. “I just—”

“Everyone’s ‘just’ something,” David muttered.

“David,” Luke said quietly.

But Jake didn’t stop.

“Do you know how many people say that?” he asked. “How many people stand right where you’re standing and say, ‘It’s not really me, I’m just doing my job’?”

Evan didn’t answer.
Because there wasn’t one.
The room had gone still now.
Not uncomfortable—worse than that.
Honest.

Jake felt it building—the anger, yes, but beneath it something else. Something sharper. Something closer to fear.

He exhaled, long and slow, and for a second it seemed like he might let it go.

But then--
“I don’t have anywhere else,” he said.

And that changed everything.

The words slipped out, unplanned. Unpolished.

True.

“This place—” Jake gestured around him, at the shelves, the lights, the people. “—this isn’t just a store. It’s where everything…clicked. Where I figured out who I was supposed to be. Where I met—”

He stopped himself.
Too late.
Luke’s gaze held his—not pushing, not rescuing. Just there.
Jake shook his head slightly, like he’d said too much.

“I know it probably looks like nothing to you,” he said, quieter now. “Like…square footage. Potential. Whatever word you want to use.”

Evan’s voice, when it came, was different now.

“I don’t think it’s nothing.”

Jake met his eyes.

For the first time, Evan didn’t look away.

“I think I just didn’t understand,” he said. “And I’m starting to.”

Silence.
Then Mark stepped forward.

He hadn’t said much all night—hovering at the edges, watching, the way he did when something mattered more than he was ready to admit.

“Okay,” he said.
Not loudly.
But enough.
Everyone turned.

“This is the part where we all pretend we have a solution,” he continued. “We don’t.”

A small, crooked smile.

“But I have something.”
Jake frowned slightly. “Mark—”

Mark reached into his coat pocket, pulling out an envelope—creased, worn at the edges.

“Don’t freak out,” he said immediately.

“That’s never reassuring,” David muttered.

“It’s not a fix,” Mark went on, looking at Jake now. “It’s not even close. It’s just…time.”

He held out the envelope.
Jake didn’t take it.
“What is it?” he asked.

“My savings,” Mark said simply. “Or…a chunk of them. Enough to maybe buy you a few months. Figure something out. Or don’t. But at least you’re not getting kicked out tomorrow.”

The room held its breath.

“Mark,” Jake said quietly, “you don’t have to—”

“I know,” Mark interrupted. “That’s kind of the point.”

A beat.

“I said I was done chasing things that don’t work,” he added. “I didn’t say I was done showing up for the ones that do.”

That landed.
Deep.

Jake stared at him for a long moment.

“This isn’t just about me,” he said.

“I know,” Mark replied. “It’s about all of us.”

Jake glanced around the room then.

Sam, still clutching the end of a string of lights like it might anchor him.

Lisa and Miranda, steady and unflinching.

David, for once without a comment.

Luke—always Luke.

And even Evan.

Standing there, uncertain but present.

Jake let out a slow breath.

“Okay,” he said.

Not acceptance.
Not refusal.

Just…acknowledgment.

“Okay,” Mark echoed, as if that was enough.

And somehow--
It was.

The music swelled slightly then, as if on cue.

Glasses were lifted again.

Someone laughed—tentative at first, then real.

The room exhaled.

Nothing was solved.

Everything was still uncertain.

But something had shifted.

Not the future.
The people.
And sometimes--
that was where everything began.



Scene Five: The Rooftop

It was Lisa who suggested the roof.

“Before we all get too sentimental,” she said, shrugging into her coat, “we should at least commit to being cold about it.”

“Nothing says emotional clarity like mild hypothermia,” David added.

“Exactly.”

They went up in small, uneven clusters—through the narrow back stairwell that always smelled faintly of dust and something metallic, past the door that stuck unless you lifted it just right.

Sam went first, because of course he did.

“Careful,” he called back. “It’s slippery.”

“Everything about tonight is slippery,” David replied, following anyway.

When Jake stepped out onto the roof, the cold wrapped around him immediately—but not harshly. Not the biting kind. Something quieter. A stillness.

Madison stretched out before them.

Lights scattered across the city like something deliberate. State Street glowing faintly below. The lake—dark, wide, and beginning to hold its breath for winter—caught what little light there was and gave it back in soft, broken reflections.

Snow fell.
Not heavy now.
Just enough.
The kind that doesn’t demand attention but changes everything anyway.

Someone—Miranda, maybe—produced a bottle of wine. Not the good one. Not the terrible one either. The middle ground where most real moments seem to live.

Plastic cups made an appearance. Or maybe mismatched mugs someone had carried up without thinking.
They gathered loosely, not in a circle, not in any formation that could be named. Just…together.

David raised his cup.
“To questionable decisions,” he said.
“To bad wiring,” Sam added.
“To aggressive candle potential,” Lisa said.
“To not being replaced by a smoothie bar,” Miranda finished.

A small pause.
Then Jake lifted his cup.
“To…time,” he said.

It was enough.
They drank.

Conversations broke apart and reformed in quiet currents.

Mark leaned against the low wall, talking softly with Lisa. Sam tried—unsuccessfully—to catch snowflakes on his tongue. David was halfway through a story that no longer had a clear beginning but refused to end.

Evan stood a little apart at first.
Not excluded.
Just…uncertain.

Miranda eventually drifted over, said something to him that made him laugh—really laugh, not the careful version—and just like that, he was no longer standing at the edge.

That’s how it worked here.
No announcements.
No permission required.

Jake stood near the far side of the roof, hands wrapped around his cup, watching the city without really seeing it.

Luke found him.
Of course.

“You okay?” Luke asked.

Jake considered the question.

“I think so,” he said.

A beat.

“I don’t know what happens next.”

Luke nodded. “Yeah.”

Another pause.

“I hate that part,” Jake added.

Luke smiled faintly. “The not knowing?”

“The waiting. The…in-between.”

Luke stepped closer, resting his arms on the ledge beside him. Their shoulders brushed—light, familiar, grounding.

“Maybe this is it,” Luke said.
Jake glanced at him. “This is what?”

“The part we’re always trying to get past,” Luke said. “The part where nothing’s decided yet. Where it’s all still…open.”

Jake let that sit.

Snow gathered lightly along the edge of the roof. Somewhere below, a car passed, its tires whispering over the street. The city didn’t stop. It never did.

“Feels unfinished,” Jake said.

Luke shrugged gently. “Maybe that’s not a bad thing.”

Jake huffed a quiet laugh. “You’re very zen about this.”

“I’m cold,” Luke replied. “It’s making me philosophical.”

Jake smiled—really smiled this time.

They stood there for a while, not talking.

Not needing to.

Below them, the bookstore glowed—soft light spilling out onto the street. Inside, the music still played faintly, drifting upward each time the door opened. The Girl from Ipanema—low, warm, familiar now.

Jake watched the light for a long moment.

“That place,” he said quietly, “it gave me something I didn’t know I was looking for.”

Luke didn’t ask what.
He already knew.

Jake exhaled slowly, his breath visible in the cold.
“And now I don’t know how to hold onto it.”

Luke turned toward him then—not dramatic, not urgent. Just present.
“You don’t have to hold onto it,” he said.

Jake frowned slightly. “Then what?”

Luke’s voice softened.

“You let it change you,” he said. “And then you take that with you…wherever you go next.”

Jake looked at him.

Snow caught in Luke’s hair, melting slowly. The city behind him blurred into light and shadow.

“You make it sound simple.”

“It’s not,” Luke said. “But it’s real.”

A long pause.
Then--
Jake leaned into him, just slightly. Enough.
Luke shifted, just enough to meet him.
No one made a big thing of it.
No one needed to.

Across the roof, laughter rose again—something David had said, no doubt. Sam nearly slipped and was caught mid-fall by Mark. Lisa shook her head, smiling. Miranda took a sip of wine and watched it all like she was cataloging something important.

Chosen family.
Not perfect.
Not permanent.
But real.

Jake closed his eyes for a moment, letting it settle.

The cold.
The quiet.
The people.
The not knowing.

When he opened them again, the snow had thickened just a little—softening edges, blurring lines, making the whole city feel…gentler.

“Hey,” Sam called out suddenly. “We should do this again next year.”

David snorted. “Bold of you to assume we survive this one.”

“We will,” Sam said, with the kind of certainty that didn’t ask permission.

Jake looked around.

At all of them.
Then back at Luke.
“Yeah,” he said.
​
Not because he knew it was true.
But because, in that moment--
it felt possible.

And the night held them there a little while longer--
between what had been
and what might come next.
Not finished.
Not fixed.
But full.
And sometimes--
that was more than enough. 🌙✨

~Wylddane

“We are, all of us, loved imperfectly—and loved truly all the same.”  ~Northwoods Proverb

The morning of May third arrived without ceremony.

No wind. No birdsong worth noting. Just a pale, suspended stillness over Stillwater Gleam, as though the lake itself had chosen to hold its breath.

Elias Whitaker stood in his garden with a pair of pruning shears hanging loosely from his hand.

The white rose had not yet opened.

It never did—not before this day. Not after. Always on this day.

Five years now.

Five years since the world had narrowed to a hospital room in a city too far from Lone Pine, where the machines had spoken in soft, indifferent rhythms, and where—he had always believed—his Margaret had slipped away alone.

He reached down and brushed his fingers against the outer petals.

Still closed.

“Stubborn thing,” he murmured.

Behind him, a soft crunch of gravel.

Elias did not turn immediately. People in Lone Pine understood quiet. They did not intrude on a man in his garden on May third. Maren and Lucy at the Bean & Birch always sent coffee in the morning, strong and black, with a note folded beneath the cup sleeve. Tom always left a bundle of split birch near the shed. Erica sometimes tucked a loaf of lemon bread into the mailbox. No one knocked. No one called out.

But this footstep hesitated.

Unfamiliar.

He turned.

A young woman stood at the low wooden gate, her hand resting lightly on the latch, as though unsure whether she had the right to touch it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you Elias Whitaker?”

There are moments in a man’s life when the past does not return gently.

It arrives standing at the gate.

Elias studied her. She was maybe thirty-five, maybe younger, with wind-tangled brown hair and eyes that looked as though they had not slept kindly in several nights. In one hand she held a worn leather satchel. In the other, an envelope.

“I am,” he said.

“My name is Sarah Quinn.” Her voice trembled, but she held herself firmly. “My mother was Helen Quinn.”

The name meant nothing to him.

He waited.

Sarah swallowed. “She was with your wife when she died.”

The shears slipped from Elias’s hand and fell into the damp soil.

Across the garden, a raven gave one low, questioning croak from the old cedar.

Elias did not move.

Sarah looked stricken. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

“I was told she was alone.”

“My mother was a volunteer at the hospital. She sat with people when family couldn’t get there in time.” Sarah looked down at the envelope. “Your wife asked her not to leave.”

Stillwater Gleam glittered beyond the garden, silver-blue in the May light. Somewhere down the lane, a dog barked once, then stopped.

Elias bent slowly and picked up the shears. His hands were steady. That surprised him.

“She asked her not to leave,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“And your mother waited five years to tell me?”

Sarah flinched, but did not retreat. “My mother died last month. I found this among her things. There was a note attached. She wanted me to bring it to you today.”

“Today.”

Sarah nodded. “May third.”

The rosebush stood between them, green and thorned and full of unopened white buds.

Elias looked at the envelope. Margaret’s name was written nowhere on it. His was.

Elias Whitaker.

Her handwriting.

His wife’s handwriting.

For a moment the garden tilted. The cedar, the lake, the pale porch, the blue coffee mug cooling on the stone bench—all of it seemed to draw away from him, as though the world had stepped backward to make room for something terrible.

He did not take the letter.

“What does it say?” he asked.

Sarah’s eyes filled. “I don’t know. I didn’t read it.”

“Then perhaps it can remain unread.”

“I promised my mother.”

“And I promised my wife I would love her until death parted us. Death has done that.”

“No,” Sarah said softly. “It hasn’t.”

The words struck him harder than he expected.

From the lane came the familiar sound of claws on gravel. Bear, Ethan’s great husky, appeared first, followed by Ethan himself with Isabel tucked comfortably into the front pack against his chest. Ragnhilde the raven flapped down from the cedar to the fence post, fixing Sarah with one bright black eye.

Ethan stopped at once.

He looked from Elias to Sarah, then to the envelope.

“Bad time,” Ethan said quietly.

“Yes,” Elias replied.

Ethan gave the smallest nod. “Coffee’s on your porch. From Maren.”

Then, as gently as he had arrived, he turned and walked away, Bear glancing back once, Isabel’s orange-and-white face peering over the edge of the pack like a small queen judging human sorrow.

Sarah watched them go.

“You have people,” she said.

“I have neighbors.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“In Lone Pine,” Elias said, “it often is.”

For the first time, Sarah almost smiled.

Then she held out the letter again.

Elias looked at it as if it were a blade.

“My mother said your wife was kind,” Sarah said. “Frightened, but kind. She talked about this garden. About the white rose. She said it bloomed every year on the day she first saw this house.”

Elias closed his eyes.

That was true.

Margaret had stood right there, beside the empty bed where the rosebush now grew, and said, “Elias, if you buy me this house, I’ll make the garden forgive you for the plumbing.”

He had bought it before sunset.

Sarah took one step closer. “She also said she had loved you.”

Elias opened his eyes.

Sarah’s face changed then, as though she already knew what the next words would cost him.

“But she said there was something she had never known how to forgive herself for.”

The morning seemed to darken, though the sun still shone.

Elias lifted a hand. “Enough.”

Sarah went silent.

“I know what people hide,” he said, and his voice had become colder than he intended. “I am an old man, not a fool.”

“I don’t think she wanted to hurt you.”

“People rarely do when they leave the knife.”

Sarah’s expression hardened, grief sharpening into anger.

“My mother carried that letter for five years because she thought honoring a dying woman mattered. She was sick herself by then. She forgot things. Names. Dates. But she did not forget this.” Sarah shook the envelope once, fiercely. “She remembered you. She remembered your wife. She remembered this garden. So you may refuse it, Mr. Whitaker, but don’t pretend that refusing pain is the same thing as preserving love.”

The raven croaked.

Elias turned away.

His chest hurt.

Not with illness. Not with age.

With memory.

Margaret laughing in the kitchen with flour on her cheek.

Margaret angry at the deer for eating her lilies.

Margaret walking beside Stillwater Gleam in October, her hand tucked into the crook of his elbow.

Margaret asleep in the chair, one book open on her lap, another fallen to the floor.

Margaret, who had once looked at him across the breakfast table and said, “You are such a good man, Elias,” in a tone he had mistaken for happiness.

Such a good man.

Not my love.

Not my darling.

Such a good man.

The white rosebush trembled.

There was no wind.

Elias saw it happen.

One closed bud at the center of the bush loosened, petal by petal, as though some invisible hand had touched it with mercy. White opened into white. Not bright. Not pure. Something softer than purity. Something that had endured rain, frost, waiting, and still chosen to bloom.

Sarah saw it too.

Neither of them spoke.

At last Elias held out his hand.

Sarah placed the envelope in it.

He sat on the stone bench beside the rosebush. The envelope felt impossibly light. He opened it carefully, almost tenderly, and unfolded the pages inside.

Margaret’s handwriting leaned slightly to the right, as it always had.

He began to read.

And there she was.

Not the ghost he had polished with grief.

Not the saint he had made of her.

Margaret.

His Margaret.

Frightened. Honest. Flawed. Human.

She wrote of a young man she had loved before Elias ever knew her. A boy from another town, another life, a summer love that had burned through her like lightning and left behind a scar she mistook for destiny. She had loved him wholly, foolishly, with the desperate certainty of youth. He had not loved her back—not enough, not bravely, not forever. He had chosen someone else, and Margaret had spent years pretending the wound had healed because no one wished to hear a heart still aching over what had never truly been.

Then came Elias.

Steady Elias.

Kind Elias.

Elias who built shelves without being asked. Elias who remembered how she liked her coffee. Elias who stood beside her in storms, funerals, winters, and ordinary Tuesdays.

She had loved him.

She wrote that plainly.

But she had carried shame because some hidden, unreachable corner of her heart still belonged to an old grief. Not to the man anymore, perhaps. Not really. But to the dream of being chosen first, fiercely, without hesitation.

You deserved a heart without ghosts, she had written.

Elias stopped reading.

The garden blurred.

Sarah sat beside him, not touching him, but near.

He read on.

I loved you the best way I knew how. I know now that I mistook the first fire for the truest flame. What you gave me was not lightning. It was hearthlight. It warmed the life I actually lived.

His hands began to shake.

Forgive me, if forgiveness is needed. But more than that, Elias, live. Do not spend the rest of your days keeping company only with what is gone. Give the rose away when it blooms. Give something of me forward.

Elias lowered the letter.

For a long while, he said nothing.

The lake moved again. A small ripple. Then another.

Sarah wiped her cheeks with the heel of her hand. “I’m sorry.”

Elias looked at the rose.

“No,” he said. His voice was rough. “Don’t be.”

He folded the letter carefully and held it against his chest.

“I thought I knew every room in her heart.”

Sarah looked at him.

He gave a sad, breathless laugh. “Turns out I was only ever invited into the ones with good furniture.”

Sarah laughed then, though it broke halfway through.

Elias reached toward the rosebush. With the pruning shears, he cut the first white bloom of May third.

For a moment he held it.

Then he handed it to Sarah.

“My wife,” he said, “made terrible coffee. Burned toast. Sang off-key when she weeded. Hated being called Maggie. Loved thunderstorms, but only if I pretended not to notice she was scared.”

Sarah held the rose as if it were fragile fire.

“My mother said she talked about you,” she whispered.

Elias nodded.

“I’m glad,” he said.

And he meant it.

By late afternoon, the Bean & Birch gang began arriving one by one, not intruding, never quite asking. Maren brought a pie. Lucy brought coffee. Ethan came back with Bear and Isabel. Ragnhilde settled in the cedar like a dark punctuation mark. Erica and Tom stood near the gate, speaking softly with Sarah as though she had always belonged to the edge of that garden.

Elias watched them from the bench.

For five years he had tended the roses as if grief were a duty.

Now, for the first time, he wondered whether love might be something else.

Not possession.

Not perfect knowing.

Not even the comfort of being first.

Perhaps love was this: an old man reading a painful letter beneath a blooming rose and discovering that the truth had not destroyed what he had cherished.

It had made it mortal.

And therefore dearer.

As evening settled over Stillwater Gleam, the white rosebush opened bud after bud, until the garden seemed full of small moons.

Elias looked toward the lake, where the sky had begun to turn lavender and gold.

Then he reached for the coffee Maren had brought, took a slow sip, and winced.

“Too strong,” he said.

From somewhere in the cedar, Ragnhilde croaked.
​
And for the first time on May third in five years, Elias laughed.

~Wylddane



​

“Where love has once lived, it never truly leaves--
it only learns new ways to be heard.”
​
The morning had come softly to Lone Pine, the kind of early light that did not so much arrive as unfold. A pale gold rested on Stillwater Gleam, and a thin veil of mist hovered just above the surface, as though the lake itself were still dreaming.

Inside Bean & Birch, the coffee gang had gathered in their usual way—unhurried, familiar, stitched together by ritual and warmth. Maren stood behind the counter, polishing a mug that did not need polishing. Lucy was arranging pastries. Erica and Tom sat near the window. Sam leaned back in his chair, hands wrapped around his cup as though it held more than coffee.

It was the sound that brought the quiet.

A low, hollow cooing drifted in through the open door.

Everyone paused.

“Doves,” Martha said softly.

They listened.

The call came again—gentle, rhythmic, carrying something deeper than sound. Something that seemed to settle not in the ears, but in the chest.

Sam set his cup down.

“My grandmother used to say,” he began, “that mourning doves don’t just sing. They remember.”

No one interrupted. They knew that tone in his voice.

“They say,” he continued, “that when you hear them, it’s because something—or someone—still loves you enough to return.”

He looked out the window toward the trees beyond the street.

“This is a story she told me. Or maybe… it’s one she lived.”

Years Before, in Another Time…There had been a small house with a garden, and beside it, a hand-built pond—stones carefully placed, water clear enough to mirror the sky. Goldfish flickered beneath the surface like living embers.

And there had been a little girl.

Her name, in the telling, was Lila.

She had golden hair that caught the sun and eyes that seemed to notice things others passed by—small movements, soft sounds, the quiet presence of life.

She was not strong, not in the way the world measures strength. Her heart had come into the world differently, and even then, the doctors spoke in careful tones, using words like hope and time as though they were fragile things.

But Lila did not seem afraid of time.

She spent her days by the pond.

And the birds came.

Not once. Not by chance. But again and again—mourning doves, soft grey, their wings whispering as they settled near her. They gathered along the stones, along the branches, sometimes so close they seemed part of her quiet world.

She would speak to them.

Not in nonsense, not in play, but in a way that made her mother pause in the doorway and listen.

“What do you hear, sweetheart?” her mother once asked.

Lila tilted her head, listening to a dove’s low coo.

“They’re telling me about where they go,” she said simply.

“And where is that?”

Lila smiled—a small, knowing thing.

“Somewhere peaceful.”

The days moved as they do—too quickly for those who are counting them, too slowly for those who fear what comes next.

Her parents tried everything.

Doctors. Specialists. Prayers whispered into the quiet hours of the night.

Love, poured out in every possible form.

But love, though powerful, cannot always alter the course of a body.

One afternoon—December had already laid its quiet hand upon the world—Lila sat beside her mother, her small fingers curled into her sleeve.

“I’m going away soon,” she said.

Her mother felt the words before she understood them.

“Where are you going, sweetheart?”

Lila looked at her with a calm that did not belong to a child.

“Somewhere you and Daddy can’t come yet.”

The room held its breath.
Her mother gathered her close, pressing her cheek into Lila’s hair, as though she might anchor her there.
But some journeys are not meant to be stopped.

It happened on a quiet December afternoon.
Snow had not yet fallen, but the air carried its promise.
And then--
She was gone.

Grief does not arrive all at once.

It comes in waves, in silences, in moments when the world continues as though nothing has changed.
For her parents, the house became both sanctuary and echo.

They could not speak her name without breaking.

They could not look at the pond without remembering.

And yet--
They could not stay away.

It was there, by the water, that it began again.

The doves returned.

One. Then two. Then many.

They gathered along the stones, just as they had before. They cooed softly, their song low and steady, like a heartbeat carried on the air.

At first, it deepened the grief.

“How can they still come?” her father asked one morning, his voice edged with something close to anger. “Don’t they know she’s gone?”

But her mother stood very still, listening.

“No,” she said quietly. “I think… they do know.”

Time did not erase the sorrow.

It softened it. Changed its edges.

The pond remained. The seasons turned.

And every year, as December returned, so too did the ache—the memory of that day, that moment when everything had shifted.

But also--
The doves.
Always the doves.

Years passed.

The world moved forward, as it insists on doing.

And then, one spring, a child was placed in her mother’s arms—a granddaughter, blue-eyed and bright, her laughter like sunlight on water.

Something shifted.

Not the loss—that remained, a thread woven into everything.

But alongside it, something gentler began to grow.

Hope, perhaps.
Or grace.

Back at the pond, on a warm afternoon, the little girl toddled toward the water’s edge.

Her mother called out, but her grandmother only watched.

The child stopped, very still.
And then--
The doves came.

One by one, they gathered, just as they had long ago.

The child laughed, reaching out with small, unafraid hands.
And in that moment, the past and present seemed to fold into one another—not replacing, not erasing, but continuing.

Back at Bean & Birch
The café was quiet.
Even the clink of cups had stilled.

Sam looked down at his hands, then back out the window where, as if summoned by the telling, a pair of mourning doves had settled on the fence just beyond the door.

“They never stopped missing her,” he said. “Not ever. But they learned… that missing someone isn’t the same as losing them completely.”

Maren exhaled softly.

Erica reached for Tom’s hand.

“And the doves?” Lucy asked.

Sam smiled, just a little.
“They still come.”

Outside, the doves cooed again—low, steady, timeless.
A sound of love.
A sound of memory.
A sound that, once heard, is never truly gone.

* * * * * * * * * *

This morning, as the light gently finds its way through the trees and the world awakens in quiet grace, I sit with my cup of coffee and think of small, sacred things.

Of ponds and birds.
Of voices carried not in words, but in presence.
Of love that does not end.

We are taught, in so many ways, that letting go means releasing, moving on, closing a door.

But perhaps that is not quite true.

Perhaps letting go is not about forgetting.

Perhaps it is about allowing what we have loved to change form—to become something that walks beside us instead of something we try to hold.

A memory.
A whisper.
A soft cooing in the morning air.

Grief does not disappear.

It becomes part of the landscape of who we are.

But so too does love.

And love—like the mourning dove—has a way of returning, again and again, in the most unexpected moments, reminding us that the bonds we form are not so easily broken.

They endure.
They echo.
They sing.
​
So if, today, you hear that soft, hollow call of a dove…
Pause.
Listen.
And remember--
You are loved more than time can measure.

~Wylddane

“The lake remembers what the land forgets.”  ~Northwoods Proverb

The call came just before dawn.
At first, no one at Bean & Birch spoke of it. They only paused—mid-sip, mid-sentence—as if something unseen had brushed past them, trailing a note of sorrow across the room.
Ethan was the first to name it.
“A loon,” he said quietly, staring into the steam of his coffee. “But… not just any call.”
Bear, at his feet, lifted his head as if he, too, remembered.
Maren set down the pot. “Stillwater Gleam hasn’t had loons this early in years.”
From the corner, old Tom—who knew the lakes the way some men knew scripture—shook his head. “That wasn’t just a wail,” he said. “That was a yodel.”
A silence settled in.
Because in Lone Pine, people knew things like that.
And a loon’s yodel… that was something else entirely.

Three nights earlier, Daniel Kessler had vanished.
A quiet man. Kept mostly to himself. Rented the old cabin on the eastern shore of Stillwater Gleam.
The sheriff’s office had already heard from one person—a visiting angler who claimed he’d spoken to Kessler the night he disappeared.
“He told me he was heading out to Blackwater Lake,” the man insisted. “Said he needed quiet water. No birds. No noise.”
“No loons?” Sam had asked when the story made its way to Bean & Birch.
“Especially no loons.”
That had seemed… odd.
But now, with Tom’s words hanging in the air, it felt like something else entirely.

It was Ragnhilde who woke Ethan.
Not with a cry—but with stillness.
Perched at the edge of the bed, the raven watched him with an intensity that meant listen.
And there it was.
A long, mournful wail drifting through the open window.
Not across the lake…
But from within the mist itself.
Ethan checked the clock.
3:00 AM.
Again.
The third night in a row.

By the fourth morning, Ethan, Bear, Isabel tucked warm inside his coat, and Ragnhilde overhead, were moving quietly along the shoreline.
The mist clung low, silver-gray, turning the lake into something ancient and unknowable.
Then--
The sound.
A tremolo—wild, laughing, almost unhinged.
And beneath it… something else.
A yodel.
Tom had been right.
Not just any loon.
A specific one.
Ethan had heard it before—last summer, late evenings, out near the northern cove. A territorial male. Distinct. Unmistakable once you knew it.
Which meant…
The angler had lied.
There were loons here.
And Kessler had never left.

The wail came again—longer now, insistent.
Bear moved first, pulling toward a narrow inlet choked with reeds.
A place no one visited.
The mist thickened as they entered, muffling the world.
And then--
The water shifted.
Just beneath the surface, something shimmered.
A dull, metallic glint.
The loon surfaced nearby.
Close.
Too close.
Its red eyes caught the pale light—startling, ancient, watching.
Then it gave a soft, almost human cry.
Not wild.
Not manic.
But… guiding.

It took time. And cold hands. And a long branch.
But eventually, Ethan drew it up.
A metal box.
Old. Rusted. Heavy.
Inside--
A journal.
Pages warped but legible.
Entries spanning decades.
And one name, repeated again and again.
Daniel Kessler.
But not recent entries.
No.
These were old.
Thirty years old.

Back at Bean & Birch, the fire burned low as the story unfolded.
Kessler hadn’t come to Lone Pine by chance.
He had returned.
As a young man, he had been part of something—something buried, something hidden in that very cove.
The journal told of a night.
Of an accident.
Or perhaps not an accident.
Of someone who had gone into the water…
…and never come back.
The box had been sunk.
The truth… silenced.
Until now.

That night, the loon called again.
But differently.
The wail was softer.
The tremolo no longer wild.
And the yodel—clear, unmistakable—rang once across the water, then faded.
As if something had been acknowledged.
Or released.

They never found Kessler.
Not in the way they expected.
But a week later, when the last of the ice loosened its grip along the shaded edges of the cove, something disturbed the surface.
At first, it was only a ripple—subtle, uncertain, as if the lake itself had drawn a breath.
Then, just for a moment…
A hand.
Bone-white.
Rising slowly from the dark water, fingers half-curled as though reaching—or remembering how to.
It lingered there, no more than a heartbeat.
And then it slipped beneath the surface once more.
Gone.
The water closed over it without a sound.
And the loon--
was silent.
​
There are voices in this world that do not speak in words, and yet carry truths we cannot ignore.
The call of the loon is one of them.
It is laughter and grief, madness and memory, all woven into a single note that drifts across water and time. It reminds us that some things do not stay buried—not forever.
And perhaps… not by accident.
For even in silence, the world listens.
And sometimes…
it answers.

~Wylddane

“What once was is never gone--
it simply becomes the music we carry within us.”

​There was a time--
and I say that now the way one speaks of a season long gone--
when Friday nights had a rhythm as dependable as a heartbeat.

We called ourselves, half in jest and half in pride, The Friday Night Social Club.

Renegades was where it all happened.

A rustic bar tucked along Stockton Street, not quite a dive, not quite polished—just right. The kind of place where the lights were always a little dim, the wood a little worn, and the laughter just a little louder than it needed to be.

Bob and I would arrive straight from work, the week still clinging to us like static. He worked in another department, but we had become friends the way people sometimes do—without effort, without reason, just recognition.

Behind the bar was Eric, who knew our drinks before we spoke them and our moods before we admitted them.

And then there were the others.

Charlie, older than the rest of us, with hands that looked like they had built half of California and a laugh that could fill the whole room.

Greg, sharp and easygoing, always with a story from San Jose.

A handsome man from HP and his partner, a chef who spoke about food the way poets speak about love.
​
And others—faces now softened by time, names that drift just out of reach but remain somehow present.

We were never fewer than a dozen. Sometimes more.
We drank.
We laughed.
We told stories that grew better each week.
We celebrated birthdays, promotions, and the simple miracle of having made it through another workweek.

For a while, it felt like that rhythm might go on forever.

But time, as it does, had other plans.
At first, it was subtle.
Someone missing a Friday.
Then two Fridays.

Then a quiet explanation offered over a drink, voice lowered, eyes avoiding the truth even as it was spoken.

AIDS.

The word settled into our lives like a shadow we could not quite name, though we all felt it.

Bob was among the first.
​
I remember the day he told me—not as a declaration, but as something quietly placed between us, like a fragile glass we both knew not to break.

And still, for a while, we kept meeting at Renegades.
Because what else do you do when the world begins to shift beneath your feet?

Eventually, the nights changed.
The laughter softened.
The group grew smaller.
There was one week—God, I remember it clearly—when there were three funerals.
Three.
After that, nothing was ever quite the same.

Bob moved to San Francisco as his illness progressed.
By then, the rhythm of my life had changed too.
Work.
Then his flat.
Groceries.
Meals.
Cleaning.
Quiet conversations that sometimes made sense and sometimes didn’t.
Caretaking.

It became its own kind of ritual—one built not on laughter, but friendship. On showing up. On not looking away.
And afterward, before heading home, I would stop at a small bar on 18th Street—Uncle Bert’s.
​
Just one or two drinks.
Just enough to let the weight ease its grip.
That’s where I met Miranda.
She understood without explanation. She was caring for someone too. We never needed to say much—just enough to know we were not alone in what we were carrying.
Friendship, born not of celebration, but of endurance.

In the end, Bob’s world grew smaller.
Confusion came.
Then silence.
He wouldn’t give me his doctor’s name, even when I knew I needed it. But I found it anyway. Arrangements were made. Quietly. Carefully.
The day it happened, he had locked the door.
I remember the panic.
Police.
Ambulance.
The breaking in—not just of a door, but of the last illusion that things might somehow right themselves.
At the hospital, I stayed.
Friends came.
They spoke to him.
I spoke to him.
Always as if he could hear.
Because I believed he could.
Because true friendship does not stop at the edge of consciousness.

The last night, I said goodbye.
Just as I always did.
And as I turned to leave, he lifted his hand—just slightly—and waved.
A small, impossible gesture.
But it was enough.
It told me everything I needed to know.

After Bob, the others followed, one by one.
The Friday Night Social Club—once a dozen strong—became fewer, then fewer still, until there were only three of us left.
Charlie.
Greg.
And me.

Years passed.
Life moved, as it always does.
Charlie retired and went to Las Vegas. Greg stayed in San Jose. I found my own path northward, into quieter places.
And then, one day, the three of us decided to meet again.
One last time.
At Renegades.

It looked the same.
That was the strange part.
The same worn wood.
The same dim light.
The same bar where we had once leaned into laughter as if it would never end.
But Eric was gone.
And so were the others.
We hugged.
We ordered drinks.
And then…
We sat.
Quietly.
Because the truth was, the room was full.
Not with people—but with memory.
With voices just beyond hearing.
With laughter that seemed to echo if you listened too closely.
Charlie looked around, took a slow sip of his drink, and then said, softly:
“There are too many ghosts in here.”

We didn’t argue.
We didn’t need to.
We finished our drinks.
We hugged again.
And that night, we said goodbye—not just to Renegades, but to something much larger.
To a time.
To a life.
To the Friday Night Social Club.

Now, years later, it is mostly memory.
Charlie is gone.
Greg and I still reach out from time to time—texts, cards, small threads connecting what remains.
And me…
I find myself thinking of those nights more often now.
Not with sadness alone.
But with gratitude.
Because once--
for a handful of years that now feel both distant and impossibly close--
we had something rare.
We had each other.
We had laughter.
We had music.
We had Friday nights that felt like forever.

And sometimes, if I close my eyes just right,
I can still hear it--
The clink of glasses.
Eric calling out an order.
​Greg making a dry observation.
Charlie laughing.
Bob yakking away to someone.
All of us together.
Once upon a time…
that once was.

~Wylddane

The first thunderstorm of April did not arrive like a guest.
It arrived like something remembering how to breathe.

Elliot Vance had been waiting for it.

From the narrow second-story room he rented on the edge of Lone Pine, he watched the radar bloom in violent colors across his monitors—reds too deep, greens too luminous, a pulsing smear of yellow that seemed almost… deliberate.

He leaned closer, adjusting the gain.
“This isn’t right,” he whispered.

The system had formed too quickly. Warm air surged up from the south, colliding with a stubborn cold mass still clinging to the northwoods. It should have been unstable, yes—but not organized. Not like this.

Not… focused.
Outside, the world held its breath.

The last of the lake ice on Stillwater Gleam had only broken three days ago. Winter hadn’t fully let go yet. The trees were still bare, their branches like ink scratches against a dimming sky.
​
And yet the air--
The air smelled alive.
Ozone. Wet soil. Something electric and ancient.
Elliot pushed back from his desk and crossed to the window. The screen trembled faintly in its frame, though the wind had not yet arrived.
“First storm of the season,” he murmured.
He had always loved this moment. The shift. The breaking open of the year.
But tonight…
Tonight felt different.

The first thunder did not crack.
It rolled.
Low. Deep. Not just heard—but felt.
It passed through him like a second heartbeat, rattling somewhere behind his ribs.
Elliot froze.
Another rumble followed—longer this time, almost… sustained.
He turned slowly back to his desk.
The radio was on.
He didn’t remember turning it on.

At first, it was just static.
A soft, whispering hiss.
He frowned and reached for the dial.
Then the static changed.
It pulsed.
Not randomly—but rhythmically. Like breath. Like waves against a shore.
Like something trying to speak.
Elliot’s hand hovered over the knob.
“…hello?” he said, half-laughing at himself.
The static surged.
And beneath it--
A sound.
A shape of sound.
Not quite a word.
Not quite.
But close.

The lightning came then.
Not white.
Not blue.
Green.
A deep, saturated green that filled the room for a fraction of a second, casting every shadow in impossible directions.
Elliot stumbled back.
“That’s not—” he began.
Thunder followed instantly.
Not a crack.
A roar.
The house shuddered.
And from the radio--
Clearer now--
A voice.

“…Ell…i…ot…”

He went still.
Every rational part of his mind rose up at once.
Atmospheric interference. Signal bleed. Audio pareidolia.
But the voice came again.
Stronger.
Closer.
“…Elliot…”

“No,” he said aloud. “No, that’s not happening.”
He reached forward and switched the radio off.
The room fell silent.
For one breath.
Two.

Then the tapping began.
At the window.

Soft at first.
Almost polite.
Rain, he told himself.
Just rain.
But the rhythm was wrong.
Too deliberate.
Too… patient.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap-tap.

He turned.
The glass was black, reflecting only the pale, strained version of himself.
And behind that--
For just a moment--
Movement.
As if something vast had passed beneath the surface of the lake beyond the trees.

The power flickered.
The monitors blinked.
And then--
Every screen filled with the same image.
Radar.
But no longer of the sky.
Of the lake.

Elliot stepped closer.
“No,” he whispered.
The storm wasn’t above Lone Pine anymore.
It was centered—perfectly—over Stillwater Gleam.
A spiral.
Tight.
Intentional.
Like an eye.

The voice returned.
Not from the radio now.
From everywhere.
From the walls.
From the floor.
From the air itself.

“…open…”

The smell of ozone thickened.
Wet earth.
Lake water.
Cold.
So cold.

Elliot staggered back as the temperature in the room dropped.
His breath fogged.
The window rattled harder now.
The tapping growing louder.
Insistent.
Hungry.

“…open the window…”

“I’m not opening anything,” he said, his voice breaking.
His chest tightened.
The thunder rolled again—longer, deeper, shaking something loose inside him.
Not fear.
Recognition.

He turned to his desk, hands shaking, and began typing.
Old records.
Local archives.
Anything.
And there it was.
Buried in a scanned newspaper from 1893.

“The first storm of April brings with it the stirring of the lake. Old fishermen warn: do not answer the storm when it calls, for what wakes beneath the ice remembers the warmth of breath—and seeks it.”

Elliot stared at the words.
The tapping became pounding.
The glass bowed inward.

“…Elliot…”

This time, it was right behind him.
Warm.
Close.
Almost gentle.

“…open the door…”

He turned.
Slowly.

The hallway beyond his room was dark.
But not empty.
Something stood there.
Not fully seen.
Not needing to be.

Lightning flashed again.
Green.
Blinding.
And in that instant--
He saw it.
Not a shape.
Not a creature.
But a presence.
Vast.
Wet.
Ancient.
As if the lake itself had risen and learned how to stand.

The thunder that followed did not sound like the sky.
It sounded like something laughing.

The door handle turned.
Slowly.
From the other side.

Elliot did not remember moving.
But he found himself standing in front of it.
Hand raised.
Breath shallow.
Heart no longer entirely his own.

“…just open…”

The tapping at the window stopped.
The storm held its breath.
The world narrowed to the space between his fingers…
…and the handle.

Outside, Stillwater Gleam churned beneath the first storm of April.
And something beneath its surface waited--
patiently--
to be let in.

~Wylddane

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