The forest felt oddly alive.
Traces of light still existed, thin strips of it breaking through the canopy, but they never stayed long enough to be useful. Every step forward felt like stepping into a maze.
The tall man in front of me didn’t slow down.
“Don’t trust what you can see,” he said.
A shape formed between the trees, then blurred as soon as I tried to focus on it. My eyes adjusted, but the forest adjusted faster.
Branches shifted when I wasn’t looking at them.
“You notice it?” he asked.
I didn’t answer right away. When I tried to focus, there was a pressure behind my eyes, like forcing a scene into place that resisted being imagined.
“I think it’s… changing what I see.”
He exhaled once, slowly. "Keep moving. Don’t focus on it,” he said quietly.
“Eyes forward. Don’t feed it attention.”
We kept walking.
And I realized I couldn’t remember how long we’d been walking before the forest started.
This was inspired by the daily prompt, but I decided to continue the story from my previous posts.