The Quieting

When the woods whisper, will you answer?

Harley stood at the edge of the woods, the hem of her dress damp and heavy with dew. The wind tangled in her hair like a breath, coaxing her to step forward, to enter the shadows where the light broke apart into spears and ribbons. She hesitated, toes sinking into the soft loam, and the thought whispered through her mind again, disappear.

Her days had become unbearably loud, clocks ticking, phones ringing, voices demanding. It was the sort of noise that pressed against her skull until the world blurred. The woods, by contrast, were silence. Not the absence of sound but a living quiet, full of rustling leaves, the distant creak of branches, the faint, dry scuttle of insects moving just out of sight.

Harley took a step, then another. The trees seemed to part for her, ushering her in with a solemn, watchful patience. She pressed her hand against the rough bark of an oak, felt the slow, ancient pulse beneath her fingertips, and thought how human it felt, alive but utterly still. She envied it.

As she walked deeper, the undergrowth thickened, pulling at her dress and ankles like unseen hands. She didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away. The vines coiled around her wrists as if testing her willingness, and when she didn’t resist, they slid free, leaving a faint green stain on her skin.

The clearing appeared gradually, a pool of green and yellow light. In its centre stood a hare. It was brown, streaked with mud, its fur blending so perfectly with the earth that it seemed conjured from the soil itself. Its eyes were unblinking, glassy amber and black, reflecting her face in miniature.

“Aren’t you beautiful” she whispered, her voice trembling. It was the first time she’d spoken in hours. The hare tilted its head, and something about the motion, the twitch of its nose, the flick of its ears, felt deliberate, almost conversational.

Harley crouched, lowering herself until her knees pressed into the damp earth. The hare took a step closer. It didn’t shy away as she reached out, her fingers brushing its fur. The texture startled her, soft but beneath the softness was a sense of density, of weight. The hare didn’t move as she stroked it, its body warm against her palm, its breathing deep and rhythmic.

Then it shifted. A single movement, almost imperceptible, but Harley felt it through her fingertips, a ripple of muscle that wasn’t entirely animal. She tried to pull her hand back, but her fingers wouldn’t obey. They were sinking, merging with the hare’s fur, her nails vanishing beneath the dense, dark coat.

“Wait—” she began, but the word came out wrong, a soft grunt that barely escaped her throat. Her vision blurred, the woods tilting and spinning as her knees gave way. The earth caught her, soft and unyielding, cradling her body as it began to dissolve.

Her legs stretched, lengthened, snapped back into taut, sinewy limbs. Her heart beat faster, a wild thrum she couldn’t control, and her lungs burned as they grew smaller, tighter, built for running instead of speaking. She felt her bones shift, her skin tighten, her senses sharpen until the world was too bright, too loud.

Harley tried to scream, but the sound that escaped was high and piercing, a cry that echoed through the clearing before falling into silence. She blinked, and the hare’s dark eyes stared back at her, not from across the clearing but from her reflection in the shallow pool of water nearby.

She was no longer separate. She was no longer herself.

The hare, the other her, twitched its ears, testing the body as one tests a new coat. The woods felt larger now, every sound amplified, every movement electric. The wind no longer teased her hair; it ran through her fur. The earth no longer supported her feet; it was beneath her, surrounding her, alive in a way she hadn’t felt before.

She turned her head and saw a figure, a woman, still crouched, staring at her with wide, empty eyes. But the figure wasn’t breathing. It was nothing but soil and bark and moss, a hollow shape collapsing inward as the woods reclaimed it.

The hare tensed her legs and leapt, the clearing blurring into streaks of green and gold as she bounded into the undergrowth. She ran until she couldn’t remember what it had been like to stand, to speak, to cry. All she knew was the quiet, the glorious, deafening quiet of the woods.

And the woods knew her.

Original artwork by E. Pearce

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