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Journal Entry, Day 1
I found it beneath the canopy, pale and trembling, barely breaking the layer of leaves. Its stem is soft and unresisting, yet there is purpose in its reach. The forest floor seems to hum beneath me, as though the soil itself remembers me, and every root nearby leans closer. I touch it gently. It shivers in acknowledgment, or perhaps it is my own pulse echoing back.
You crouch low. The air smells of rain and decay, of moss pressed into hidden hollows. Roots brush against your fingers, delicate, searching, curling in ways that feel almost sentient. Each breath is thick and heavy, carrying the scent of damp earth, of life unseen beneath the leaves. You feel them everywhere — beneath your hands, along your ankles, brushing against your ribs — as if the grove has been waiting for you, leaning in to meet your presence.
The soil shifts subtly under you, and your own heartbeat seems to sync with the quiet thrum beneath. You reach out, fingertips grazing a pale stem, and it bends toward you, gentle, insistent. The pull is not a force but a recognition — an echo of something you never knew you had lost. You feel it in your chest, in the hollow behind your sternum, a pulse that is both yours and not yours. Every inhalation feels like a negotiation, every exhalation a surrender.
Journal Entry, Day 4
Voyra—what I’ve named it—stirs when I return. Its pale blossoms tilt in my direction, almost conscious of my gaze. The dreams have grown heavier; I awaken with traces of damp earth on my lips, the faint hum of roots curling through my mind. Each night, I feel drawn down into it, pulled into the soil, into something alive and waiting.
You lean closer, drawn by the quiet insistence beneath the leaves. The roots twist and writhe softly, brushing against your arms and legs, wrapping and unwrapping, teasing and guiding. There is an intimacy in the movement, a careful rhythm that mirrors your own breathing. The air grows warmer, denser, carrying the faint metallic scent of rain-mixed soil and the deep sweetness of life hidden underground.
Every step forward feels like stepping deeper into a current you cannot see, yet cannot resist. You sense the grove’s awareness, subtle and enveloping, like the brush of a thought across your mind. Each pulse in your chest is echoed in the roots that curl around unseen spaces of your body, filling and mapping, brushing past nerves and memory alike. You feel yourself uncoiling, stretching to meet it, folding into the soft insistence of something older than the trees themselves.
Journal Entry, Day 8
Voyra has begun to bloom more fully, even in my absence. Its petals stretch like fingers reaching for something lost, and I feel the pull deep within me. I touch it and feel a pulse travel along my arms, a gentle insistence that I belong here, that I have always belonged. The dreams are vivid; I see fragments of faces I might have known, memories I cannot place, as though it recalls things I once held and forgot.
You press closer, letting the roots curl along your ankles, up your wrists, through the hollows of your chest. The grove is patient. The stems bend, brushing your cheeks, tracing your jaw, the edges of your ears. Every contact hums with something ineffable — recognition, longing, memory, communion. It is slow, deliberate, almost reverent.
The earth beneath you vibrates in a rhythm you can feel more than hear, as if the soil itself is breathing alongside you. You tilt your head, letting the movement guide you, folding into the subtle insistence of the grove. It does not squeeze, does not push; it envelops, claiming, mapping, remembering. Every motion is mirrored, every pulse amplified, until the line between you and the forest becomes a blur.
Journal Entry, Day 12
The grove hums with attention. Voyra feeds on memory, and I feed it in turn, willingly. I see my own reflection in its blossoms, rearranged, altered. Sometimes I feel it bending the edges of my dreams, threading fragments of myself through its roots. I am not afraid. There is a certainty in this connection, a completeness I cannot find elsewhere.
You feel the grove tighten around you, the pulse of life threading through the loam and climbing along your limbs. Every inhalation carries the weight of the forest’s memory, the pulse of something older than anything you have ever known. Roots curl at your feet, tracing invisible paths, spiraling up the curve of your spine, brushing your elbows and wrists. You sway with the rhythm, drawn to it, folding inward, outward, letting it map you, claim you, merge with you.
There is no urgency, no rush — only the slow, steady insistence of life flowing through every thread. You can feel the grove breathing with you, responding to you, learning you, claiming you without force. Each beat of your heart is mirrored in the stems, a quiet, pulsing communion, something sacred that is not quite human, not quite plant, but both all at once.
Journal Entry, Day 16
Tonight, the final bloom unfurls. Pale, trembling, alive. It folds into me as much as I fold into it. I feel every thread of memory I have ever released, reclaimed and returned. I am both the observer and the observed, the keeper and the kept. I do not struggle. I do not resist. The grove knows me. I belong.
You cannot tell where you end and the grove begins. Every root, every petal, every pulse of soil and leaf presses around you, weaving through the hollows of your mind. You fold into it completely, letting the hum of life envelope you. The grove remembers, and you remember it. There is no outside. There is only the pulse, slow and steady, the sacred rhythm of something infinite, and you are at its center, both lost and found.