The Watcher Who Remembers

You have walked past trees like this your whole life without seeing them, the ones old enough to have stopped growing upward and started growing inward instead, folding centuries of weather into their own skin. This one noticed you before you noticed it.

Look at the eye that's gone hollow. That wasn't wound, not really, that was surrender, the slow way wood gives up a limb it no longer needs and lets the moss claim the empty socket as its own. The other eye never closed all the way. It doesn't need to. It has had three hundred years to learn what it's looking for.

They say the ones who linger nearby, pale, half-woven from the mist that pools at its roots at dusk, aren't haunting the tree. They're keeping it company. Something that old shouldn't have to wait alone for whatever it's waiting for.

You should keep walking. But you won't, not yet. That's how it gets you to stay.