Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 186: It Wasn’t a Fall, It Was a Return

Chapter 186: It Wasn’t a Fall, It Was a Return

I couldn’t say how I came back. Not exactly. Not in the way we describe returning somewhere consciously, like retracing a path or crossing a door.

No. It wasn’t a decision, not even a will.

I hadn’t tried to come back. I hadn’t called, or prayed, or screamed. I hadn’t demanded anything. I hadn’t triggered anything.

And yet, something — or maybe nothing, precisely — had brought me back.

As if space had gently led me back to myself, without warning, without flash, without explanation, as if I had returned not into a place, but into a remnant of presence, into a forgotten breath of myself that the world had decided, for a moment, to give back to me.

The Fern Plateau.

Still suspended in that matte, unreal light, where nothing cuts, where everything caresses.

Still soft, in that strange way places can be tender without intention, as if they had been shaped not to welcome, but not to hurt.

Still alive, yes, with that slow, vegetal, almost maternal breath, which seems to rise from the soil itself.

The tall leaves quivered at the slightest breeze — not like a mechanical reaction, but like a memory; a tender, silent echo, almost grateful, as if they recognized me, as if they remembered me... not as I had become, but as I had once been.

And I, in that suspended world, was no longer the one fleeing in urgency, in fear, in crawling shame.

I was no longer the one screaming his hatred to fill the void or terrify love.

I was just there, standing without strength, present without will, short of breath as after a race against oneself, shoulders lowered, relaxed more by surrender than by rest, eyes open but empty, staring without seeing, absorbing without understanding, as if everything in me was still floating between too much and nothing.

And I... I listened.

Not like you listen to a curious sound or a familiar echo, but with that silent, full, almost vulnerable attention you reserve for things you’ve long refused to hear.

The song was there, resting on the air like an ancient truth, and yet I had never grasped it this way.

It wasn’t louder, nor more present, nor even changed in form or rhythm, but something in me, this time, had opened differently.

For the first time... I truly heard it.

Not just the melody, not only the harmonic curves or the suspended shivers of the notes — no, beyond the music, in the very hollow of its breath, there were words.

Very faint at first, almost dissolved in the light, almost swallowed by the gentleness of their birth.

Very blurred, like written in fog you don’t dare to wipe away.

But clear.

Clear enough for me to know they were meant for me.

Clear enough that I could no longer pretend not to understand.

The words vibrated in the air like a truth whispered for too long, one of those sentences you no longer dare speak because it burns the lips, because it rings true — too true.

— You were so little...

And that simple whisper went through me entirely, raised a shiver that had nothing of an alert, nothing of fear, but carried instead the strange texture of recognition.

It wasn’t a memory, not yet, but an old imprint suddenly regaining its shape.

— ... and yet...

Another note rose, barely perceptible, but I felt it vibrate somewhere in my belly, in my ribs, in the quietest fibers of my blood, as if it had always been there, buried under gestures, under defenses, under noise.

— ... everyone was waiting for you.

I stopped.

Immediately.

Not by choice, nor by fear, nor because my body gave out, but because I couldn’t do otherwise.

My legs buckled beneath me, not like under pain, not like under a blow, but simply because that truth — there, before me, around me, within me — was too simple, too bare, too direct for me to resist it.

It slipped under the armor. It didn’t skirt shame, it embraced it.

And I didn’t know how to defend myself against it.

I fell to my knees, slowly, almost naturally, as if the ground had stopped being support and become a refuge — not a collapse, but a return, a soft fall into something truer than standing.

The ferns approached, yes, as if guided not by wind but by an intention I couldn’t name.

Their leaves brushed my cheeks, my neck, my arms, with that strange tenderness, vegetal, silent, as if they were trying to recognize me with the tips of their veins, to comfort me without asking questions.

And I stayed there, motionless, deeply, without tension, without fleeing.

Not out of resistance, no.

Not out of fear either.

But because I no longer knew how to move without risking breaking this fragile moment, this rare silence, this embrace of the world around me which, for the first time, did not judge me.

Because sometimes, the slightest gesture is enough to make everything collapse.

And I no longer had the strength to rebuild.

And then, the voice returned.

Softly. Without burst, without clash, as if it had never truly vanished, as if it had simply fallen silent for a moment to let me breathe.

It wasn’t loud, nor cruel, nor commanding — it was there, simply there, resting in the air like an old, familiar, almost maternal presence, woven into the silence with that rightness you don’t question.

It didn’t say what I feared.

It said what I no longer dared to hope.

— You thought you came alone...— But we were already waiting for you.

I closed my eyes.

Not to shut out the world, but to feel it differently, from within, with that new acuity that is born in moments of shift.

And tears came.

Not violent. Not wrenching. Not those tears you push out of yourself like a rupture.

No.

Slow tears, warm, silent — tears that didn’t explode but settled, patiently, like a truth finally allowed to flow.

And they weren’t there for what I had lost.

They weren’t there for the dead, nor for the faults.

They came... for what I had never believed I had.

That something which, against all odds, had been there from the beginning.

I wasn’t yet ready to accept it.

Not entirely.

Something in me still resisted, out of habit maybe, or fear of what it would change if I truly gave in.

But a crack had opened, discreet, thin, almost imperceptible, and yet irreversible — not a brutal split, not a tear, just an opening, fragile, tenuous, enough to let pass something other than refusal.

And in that opening, almost shy, almost restrained, the song slipped in again, slowly, patiently, like an old breath come to the surface, like an inhale I had not yet dared to take, a first breath the body hesitates to claim, afraid it might be the last — or the first of a life one doesn’t know how to inhabit.

So, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I let go — not in the surrender of a fall, not in the fatigue of a body giving way, but in that more intimate, more vertiginous kind of release, the one that consists in no longer holding back what rises, in no longer locking the inner doors.

I let my old memories resurface, those fragments of emotion denied for too long, those blurry, trembling images I had buried under layers of silence and rage.

Everything was still confused, drowned in a mist of distorted memory, but I felt it — viscerally, undeniably — that it was there, that everything came from there.

That it was in that place, in that precise hollow, that something had broken without ever truly healing.

That it was there my original fracture had taken root, that mute breaking point around which my whole life had been built without me seeing it, without admitting it, without even knowing how to name it.

I knew, deep down, I couldn’t flee forever.

That if I wanted to grow — truly grow, not just survive or change masks — I would have to face it, dive into that wound instead of continuing to avoid it.

So I listened to that lullaby, strange, soft, troubling, that song that vibrated all around me like an echo of what I should have heard all along.

And I tried — clumsily, painfully — to grow, not by surpassing myself, but by opening up, by ceasing to fight against what had been offered without demand.

I tried to become better, not for others, not to redeem myself, but simply so I wouldn’t be a prisoner of what I had been.

And I felt, with every breath, every note, that this world, despite everything, had changed me.

This world I had hated, that I had rejected out of pride or fear, this world I had treated as an enemy or a trap, this world was maybe there... to help me.

It didn’t judge me. It didn’t punish me. It waited, simply.

And maybe it was time, finally, to begin accepting it.

And then, as if to confirm what I had just accepted, as if the world itself had heard that inner trembling and decided to take it at its word, I let my fatigue take over, without fighting this time, without startle or resistance.

I let myself slip, slowly, into that sleep I had always dreaded — not because it scared me, but because it implied letting go of control.

Morpheus came for me without violence, with warm arms, muffled gestures, and I let myself be reached, rocked by the warm breath of the earth, to the rhythm of that lullaby which, paradoxically, stung my heart as much as it warmed it.

As if each note rubbed a still-open wound while laying down a warmth no longer expected.

And for the first time in far too long, I surrendered to a true sleep, deep, restorative, without fear of what I would find there.

As if something, at last, had loosened its grip inside —

And that I could, for just one night, simply... sleep.