She had packed with care. The list was checked twice—warm coat, dried food, a charged phone, her father's compass, the one he said would never fail. And her glasses. Thick-rimmed, scratched on the left lens, always sliding down her nose. Without them, her right eye was nearly useless. A soft blur, a smear of colour and light.
Just a quick trip before the move. One last goodbye to the cliffs where she used to sit as a child, where the wind knew her name and the sea always seemed to listen. Just a moment of stillness. Closure.
No one knew she’d gone.
That was part of the appeal. No messages, no calls, no pretending. Just her and the trail.
But the trail didn’t look the same.
She chalked it up to erosion, time, the way memories play tricks on the living. Trees closer than before. Sky thinner. The sound of birds... not birds.
Still, she found the cliff. Sat on the edge. Watched the water far below move without rhythm.
“Before I go,” she whispered.
A promise. To the wind. To herself.
Then the wind whispered back.
It said her name.
She stood too fast. The earth cracked beneath her foot—not a collapse, but a split. A fault. Like something underneath the land had flexed. She stepped back. Her glasses slipped. She caught them. Barely.
The compass spun. She turned. The path was gone.
There were trees. But not the ones from before. Black bark. Branches twitching in a wind she couldn’t feel. No birds now. Just air, tight in her lungs.
She walked. Then ran. Circles. Spirals. The sea no longer visible. The cliff had vanished. The sky dimmed.
With every stumble, her glasses shifted. She held them tight, refusing to lose the last anchor between clarity and blindness. Her right eye kept failing her. The forest turned patchy, broken.
She screamed once.
Nothing answered.
By nightfall, she built a fire from bark that didn’t burn and leaves that didn’t dry.
She tried the phone. The screen lit up. No signal. Just one notification: Are you still there?
She didn’t recognise the number.
She tapped it.
The phone turned off. Permanently.
She woke the next morning with soil in her mouth. Fingernails black with sap. The compass was gone. Her glasses were askew, one arm bent, the left lens cracked.
Footprints circled her sleeping mat.
Not hers.
She doesn’t know how many days it’s been.
The sun never moves. The wind keeps whispering.
It knows her name.
And now, it’s teaching others to say it.
Her vision slips more each hour. She holds the glasses together with trembling fingers.