We left the forest together.
For a while, neither of us spoke. Our hands remained linked as if it were the most natural thing in the world, fingers fitting easily, palms warm despite the cool air. The path widened as we walked, trees thinning, light breaking through in familiar patterns.
It was only when the road came into view that our hands slipped apart.
Not abruptly. Not awkwardly. Just enough space opening between us for the world to reassert itself.
Oisín stopped first.
I turned, already knowing he wouldn't follow me the rest of the way. He stood with his hands shoved into his coat pockets, weight shifted back on his heels, watching me with an expression I couldn't name.
"I'll see you," he said.
It wasn't a promise. It didn't need to be.
I nodded. "Yes."
We lingered longer than necessary, both of us pretending there was something else to say. Then I took a step back, then another. When I reached the bend in the road, I looked over my shoulder.
He was still there.
So was I.
Eventually, I turned and walked on.
Home smelled like boiled potatoes and turf smoke. Familiar, grounding. My mother was in the kitchen, radio turned low but not off, the murmur of voices threading through the room as I slipped past.
"...civil rights marchers in the North," the announcer said, voice careful, clipped. "Reports are still coming in, but witnesses say police opened fire. Several injured. At least two dead."
I froze in the hallway.
The words settled slowly, like ash.
My mother tutted softly, shaking her head. "Terrible business," she murmured, as if distance softened impact. "It'll only make things worse."
I moved to my room without speaking, closing the door gently behind me.
The radio's voice carried faintly through the walls, listing places I recognised. Streets I'd walked once. People who spoke like us, only harder, sharper around the edges.
Something shifted inside me.
It wasn't fear.
It was heat.
A pressure bloomed low in my chest, spreading outward, filling my limbs with a restless energy that made it hard to sit still. My pulse quickened, but it wasn't panic. It felt... right. Purposeful.
Strong.
I clenched my hands, surprised at the force in them. My nails bit into my palms, sharp enough to sting. My senses sharpened in strange, disorienting ways-the tick of the clock sounded too loud, the scent of turf smoke too thick, the house too small to contain me.
I closed my eyes and breathed, but the feeling didn't fade.
Instead, images surfaced unbidden. Running across open ground. Muscles burning, stretching, becoming. A low, resonant sound vibrating in my chest-not quite a voice, not quite a thought.
I pressed my back to the wall, heart hammering now, not with fear but with something dangerously close to exhilaration.
This wasn't grief for strangers.
This was response.
As if the violence, the injustice, the imbalance had struck a chord inside me-something old and coiled, something that recognised the sound of threat.
I thought of the forest. Of the stones. Of Oisín standing watchful at the edge of the trees.
My hands trembled.
For the first time, I understood with absolute certainty that whatever had been sleeping beneath the land had begun to wake.
And it was awake in me.
