The Woods -

It wasn't a quiet place, though. It was a place of a thousand small noises: the frantic scuttle of a beetle through dead leaves, the creak of two birch trees leaning into each other like old gossips, and the distant, rhythmic drumming of a woodpecker. Everything felt alive, but with a slow, deliberate heartbeat that made human time feel frantic and thin.

The canopy didn’t just block the sun; it swallowed it. Stepping into the woods was like diving into deep water. The air changed first—thick with the scent of damp pine needles and the cold, metallic tang of wet stone. Here, the ground was a velvet carpet of moss that drank the sound of every footfall, leaving only the rhythmic snap of dry twigs to punctuate the silence. The Woods

Deeper in, the light turned to liquid gold where it managed to pierce the leaves, illuminating clouds of gnats dancing in the heat. There were no paths here, only the suggestions made by deer and the insistent pull of a downhill slope toward a hidden creek. To be in the woods was to be both a guest and an intruder—to feel the immense weight of the trees watching, rooted and indifferent, as you passed through their world. It wasn't a quiet place, though