My body stood.

  It was not a decision. The body stood because the body had something older than will — the reflex that said, that it had enough of sitting. Stillness was the interruption. The interruption had ended.

  I walked.

  The path — there was a path. Left of the oak, through the undergrowth, a line worn into the forest floor by repetition. Animal, probably. Deer, or whatever else had traveled the same route for long enough to leave evidence.

  I followed it. Not because left was better than right. Because left was where the path was and direction was the only thing the body still required.

  The brown circle moved with me. Three paces. Grass behind me: dead. Grass ahead: alive until I arrived, then dying, then dead. Not footprints — the opposite of footprints. Where I walked, the world subtracted.

  Trees. Large. Where their trunks were within the radius, their bark dried and leaves lost rigidity. Outside the circle, everything was fine. Green. The boundary moved as I moved — sharp, clean, the border between the livable and everything I touched.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  I walked.

  Day shifted. The light changed angles. Afternoon became something else. The temperature dropped. I noticed.

  Another berry on a branch. A different bush than yesterday's, but the same color. My hand stayed at my side. Not refusal — the hand simply didn't know about the berry. The hand knew about swinging, about balance.

  I passed the berry. It stayed red. I stayed walking.

  Night arrived, the way it did in forests. A gradual withdrawing of light in layers. The canopy filtering sunset into rumor and rumor into dark.

  I walked.

  Through the night because stopping required a decision and decisions were the thing that had left. My legs operated. The path continued.

  Stars. Visible through the canopy in patches. I did not look at them. Looking was a kind of caring.

  A sound. Close. Feathers adjusting. Wings.

  A bird. On the branch beside me — small, dark, close enough that the ants would have diverted. Its head turned. Small eyes, bright. Looking at me without deciding what I was.

  It twitched. The full-body shudder, every feather at once. Then gone — up, away, fast.

  The first living thing to come close in — however long this was. But it came to the same conclusion as everything else. To don't stay, but to be somewhere else.

  I walked.

  Past the branch where it had been. Past the berry. Past the trees whose bark dried and recovered in my wake.

  The brown circle, constant. The forest, infinite.

  And the bird, gone.