Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 153: The Field of Memories

Chapter 153: The Field of Memories

In the heart of that suspended wandering, of that drift with no shore and no compass, as my steps no longer answered to anything but the weariness of being, I saw it.

Not an illusion. Not a mental projection or a psychic escape. No.

I truly saw it.

It was there, in front of me, tangible in its mute beauty, with a presence too calm to be real, a peace almost offensive: a field.

An immense field, without edge, suspended in the void like a forgotten promise, an island of respite condemned to float for eternity in a world with no sky.

But it was not made of earth.

It wasn’t composed of soil, nor of rock, nor of raw matter — no, nothing I knew.

This field... it seemed woven. Woven into absence itself, into the very breath of dream.

Millions of strands, vegetal but unreal, threadlike and delicate, rose in slow undulations, of such a pale green that it became almost transparent, diaphanous, bathed in inner light.

They vibrated slightly, but without wind. As if the air hadn’t dared touch them, or perhaps they obeyed a different rhythm — older, more intimate, slower. A rhythm of memory.

Each filament evoked a living silk, a matter born of forgotten memories, a substance gently swaying before my eyes, fragile and sacred like a field of abandoned memories waiting for nothing, except perhaps... to be brushed.

And they vibrated.

Not because of wind — there was no wind — but because of me.

With each uncertain step, with every movement, even hesitant, I saw them shiver like raw nerves, like thousands of small sensitive bodies reacting to my mere presence.

They didn’t flee. They didn’t contract.

No.

They bowed. Slowly. Respectfully.

As if the entire field welcomed me, not as a guest, nor as an intruder, but as a missing piece.

And then, I understood.

This field wasn’t simply alive. It was conscious.

Conscious of me. Of my body. Of my breath. Of my pain.

And above all... it was waiting for me.

It wasn’t an opening, not a trap, not a vision. It was a silent invitation, a voiceless call, woven into every vibration, every almost loving tremor rising from the strands.

So I stepped forward.

One step.

Then another.

Slowly, as one approaches a memory too sacred to be touched.

Then I placed my foot.

The precise instant my sole brushed that impossible grass, that interweaving of vegetal silk suspended in oblivion, something occurred.

Nothing spectacular. Nothing audible. No light, no wave, no rupture.

But a shiver.

Subtle. Muffled. Like a ripple on still water.

And that shiver, I felt it — not in me, not in my flesh, but around. In the world itself.

As if reality had trembled, imperceptibly, as if the air, the stifled sky, the distant islets, the whole of this frozen space... had held its breath.

One moment.

Just one.

A breath suspended in the spine of the universe.

And then I knew: something had just recognized me.

Not as a stranger. But as someone ancient. As a returning one.

Around me, the strands stirred with a slowness almost ceremonial, forming concentric circles that rippled like on the surface of once-frozen water — but it wasn’t water.

It was the ground itself, that strange ground, that living matter, vegetal, but with memory, with a strange persistence, as if it remembered my arrival before it had even happened, as if my step, just placed, awakened an ancient wave, a forgotten imprint engraved in its fibers.

They vibrated again, more finely, as if they trembled with recognition or fear, then moved aside, not violently, but with an almost awkward softness, as one opens a path for someone they don’t understand but have ceased to reject.

They did not repel me. They did not test me. They opened.

Like a circle of loved ones who, despite the wounds, choose to make you a place.

Like a family you betrayed but who still leaves the door ajar.

And then... something burst forth.

Not before me. Not around. But within me.

An image, or rather... an irruption.

A vision that didn’t pass through my eyes, nor my usual senses, but infiltrated my marrow, my inner retina, that indefinable place where memory, pain and illusion blur together.

It wasn’t a memory I had summoned. It wasn’t a reminiscence I was ready to welcome.

It was a gift.

Or an intrusion.

Injected with precision, as if the field itself — that vibrating ground, that vegetal consciousness carpet — had chosen, arbitrarily, to awaken a buried scene, a fragment of me I would have preferred never to see again.

And I knew, in that instant, that I would not be allowed to look away.

A toy.

Small. Worn.

Forgotten by all, except by this world that had just spat it back into my flesh.

An old wooden toy, tiny and crooked, its colors so pale, so washed by time that only memory-hues remained on its surface — a red turned dirty pink, a green turned dusty grey.

One of its wheels hung limply, half torn, the axle twisted like a dislocated bone, a bent joint.

It no longer rolled. It limped. It fell on its side as soon as one pushed it, like a wounded animal that one refuses to finish, like a tired companion still loved nonetheless.

And yet... I knew.

I knew it had been mine. Or that it had belonged to a younger, smaller, softer me.

I didn’t remember it, not really — no clear image, no precise moment surfaced.

But my fingers... they hadn’t forgotten.

My body remembered. My nerves, my palms, the spaces between my knuckles.

They had known that wood, that weight, that friction.

They had rolled that toy on a forgotten floor, maybe wood, maybe packed dirt.

They had pushed it with care, then frustration, then anger.

And eventually... they had made it fall.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Until it broke.

Not in one gesture. Not in a blow.

But in that kind of sad persistence that too-lonely children have, those who don’t yet know that love can be gentle, and who believe that destruction is a form of attention.

And beneath my nails, I even thought I felt the splinter.

That one.

The tiny one.

The one I had forgotten... and that had never left me.

Then came the laughter.

Then came the laughter.

Not laughter this world could create. No.

Too blurry to be real, too sharp to be hallucinations, too full of life to belong to this soft, dead matter surrounding me.

They were children’s laughter — high-pitched, light, airy — but their very purity made them suspect, almost unhealthy.

They swirled around me like a cyclone of emaciated echoes, circles of disembodied joy, vibrating with memories too precise to be invented, too loud to be mere images.

Ghosts, yes, but happy ghosts.

And that was the worst part.

Those voices didn’t condemn me.

They played.

They chased each other in a past that no longer belonged to me, but that remembered me.

They brushed my temples like fine blades, planting claws of childhood into each auditory nerve, twisting into my memory shards of soiled innocence.

And the words, the sentences, the fragments rose up, not spoken but imprinted in my flesh:

— ...ha ha... there! Catch it!— He broke it... again...— But he’s crying! Look at him...

And suddenly, I didn’t want to hear them anymore.

My body tensed, stepped back, first out of reflex, then out of fear.

One step. Then another.

As if that laughter could touch me, contaminate me, bring me back to a version of myself I had suffocated for too long.

Each sound, each flash of joy struck me like a cruel reminder that I had once been... different. One day. A day so far away that even this world’s sky no longer remembered it.

I turned my head, both to flee the sound and to confront it, unable to choose between flight and aggression, between dreamt silence and necessary scream.

I wanted to silence them.

I wanted to scream at them to shut up. To yell that it was no longer time to play, that this world was not a playground, that my temples would explode if they laughed again.

But they did not fade.

They continued, relentless, indifferent, whirling around me like memory-insects, buzzing at the base of my skull, licking my memories with an invisible tongue, sucking me to the bone.

And the more I retreated, the more I fled those disembodied bursts of joy, the more I understood the horror — the obvious truth — that I had wished to ignore:

these were not foreign voices.

These were not children.

These were not ghosts.

They were me.

They were my own laughter, echoed from a past I had too well buried.

My own mockery, my own childhood words twisted by time.

My own breath turned into sarcasm, into wound.

Each burst, each intonation, each breath of carelessness struck my consciousness like a blade too finely honed.

I heard my silences then, my cracked laugh to mask anxiety, my voice too high to be honest, my screams of escape disguised as play.

It was me.

Me, small.

Me, lost.

Me, already broken.

Me, running through wall-less corridors, chased by things I never could have named.

Me, already refusing to look back.

Me, laughing not to cry.

Me, who had never been heard.

And that me... he had stayed.

Here.

Amid all this — this cyclone of forgotten laughter, these echoes of childhood clawing my soul from behind — something slid, almost in silence, almost respectfully, as if this world had suddenly understood that it must no longer press, but brush gently.

A voice.

Not a scream. Not mockery.

A low voice, laid like a warm cloth on burning skin. A voice not trying to strike me, but to wake me.

It was softer. Slower. Closer.

It did not emerge from the shapeless mists of memory — no.

It didn’t float in the indistinct. It wasn’t blurry.

It was there. Precise. Painfully present.

As if it had been waiting for me forever, seated in a corner of my skull I had walled off, barricaded, deliberately forgotten.

And now that it returned, it was as if a fault silently opened in the center of my sternum, letting air seep into cavities I thought were dead.

It spoke on a breath that didn’t exist, and yet I heard it as if it had leaned just behind me, at the exact point where the neck becomes vulnerable.

A voice that knew my silences.

My real pains.

The ones I had never admitted, even to myself.

— You regret it, don’t you?

And I froze.

Not in a defensive gesture.

Not like one stops to listen.

Not even like one hesitates.

I froze like one goes out.

Like a flame realizing the breath is gone.

Like a puppet feeling the string pull — not to animate it, but to remind it it was never free.

Everything suspended.

My breath.

My heartbeat.

My weight.

And that silence... that silence fell around me like a blanket too thick, soft, warm, unbearable.

There was nothing.

No whisper. No breath.

Not even a clear thought to precede what came.

Just... a gentle compression of the air.

A suspension.

A shiver at the back of the skull, not rising from any memory, from no identifiable fear.

There was nothing — and yet, everything changed.

She was there.

Not like an image.

Not like a dream or a vision shattered by fatigue.

Not like an echo from my past or an illusion born of pain.

She was neither mist, nor voice, nor memory.

She was not a specter, not a silhouette from before, not an absence warmed by memory.

She was a presence.

Full. Total. Unquestionable.

Like a fire without flame, like a hand without contact, like a truth one does not see but that distorts everything it touches.

She did not speak to me.

She did not move.

She did not shine.

She was there.

And her very existence was enough to crush everything else.

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