The forest itself proved wrong in ways that took considerable time to properly articulate.
The trees grew impossibly close together in certain sections and unnaturally, inexplicably far apart in others, as though the very space itself couldn’t quite decide how expansive it genuinely wanted to be.
Patches of sunlight fell in configurations that simply didn’t correspond logically to the actual visible position of the sun overhead.
They had walked for perhaps twenty minutes, carefully dropping pinches of salt exactly as instructed, when the laughter first began.
Distant at first — a child’s delighted, high-pitched laugh, drifting from somewhere off to their left.
Then a second layer of sound beneath it, someone considerably older, warmer, clearly amused by something entirely invisible to either of them.
“That sounds like…” Aanya stopped walking abruptly.
“That sounds exactly like my aunt.
She passed away when I was only nine years old.” “Don’t,” Vihaan said immediately, remembering Prem Singh’s careful warning with sudden urgency.
“I know, I know.
I’m not actually moving toward it.” She said this as much to convince herself as to reassure him.
“I simply wasn’t prepared for it to sound quite so precisely accurate.” They continued walking forward.
The laughter followed them at a careful, measured distance, never quite catching up entirely, never quite fading away completely either — patient, in the specific way a predator remains patient when it already knows with absolute certainty exactly where the path ultimately leads.