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.
