The One Who Lives In The Trees

People don’t disappear in the Carpathian forest.
They’re found.

That’s the part everyone gets wrong.

They whisper about the woods like it’s a mouth that swallows people whole, like the moss is carnivorous, like the wind carries teeth. They talk about lures and shadows and old gods with unpronounceable names.

They believe fear keeps them safe.
How adorable.

The truth is quieter. Stranger.
More human than anyone wants to admit.

The forest doesn’t take people.
It answers them.

You see it in the ones who wander past the last tree line. Their eyes always look the same, not lost, not terrified, tired.

Tired of houses that echo.
Tired of people who pretend they care.
Tired of their own names.

Humans underestimate how much a person will trade for silence.

And the forest?

It offers silence the way a knife offers mercy.
It begins small, barely noticeable.
A tendency to listen instead of speak.

A habit of waking up before dawn, waiting for the sky to tell you what color it intends to be.

A feeling that your heartbeat sounds wrong when echoed off drywall but right when echoed off bark.

Visitors report strange things, of course.
A pale shape slipping between branches.
Footprints that circle campsites instead of approaching.
Offerings woven from bone and bark, left on stumps like warnings, or invitations.

Some swear they heard singing.
Some swear they saw antlers.
Some swear she watched them from the canopy.

But eyewitnesses are unreliable.

Humans will turn anything into a monster if it keeps them from recognizing the truth: No one becomes a creature of the forest without wanting to.

The disappearances were predictable, really.

All of them restless.
All of them grieving something unnamed.
All of them hollowed out long before the forest touched them.

Some ran screaming back to civilization.
Some joined the missing.
Most never crossed the border at all.

The local authorities have their theories, cult, predator, hermit, hallucination.

They search for a creature.
They never search for a choice.

I’ve watched them hunt for years.
Maps. Drones. Night-vision cameras.
All pointed the wrong direction.
They look outward.
They should look inward.

It’s almost funny, how close they get.

How confidently they say things like:
“She’s out there somewhere.”
“She must be starving.”
“She must be afraid.”

As if fear has anything to do with it.

They don’t understand what the forest does to a person.

How it strips them down to the bone.
How it teaches them what pieces of themselves are unnecessary.
How it whispers back every thought they were afraid to say out loud.
How it names you long before you’re ready to hear it.

They’re still searching, you know.
Still calling my old name through the trees like it’s a lifeline I dropped.

Sweet of them, really.

But you can’t rescue someone who never wanted to be found.

And besides, I walk on four limbs now.
And I do not answer to that name anymore.