They never knew how to answer.

  My mom would stare at her plate. My dad would change the subject.

  But I always knew they were lying.

  Or maybe they just didn’t understand me.

  They said I was “a miracle.”

  That they’d waited years for a child, and then one day, there I was.

  Adopted. Wanted. Loved.

  And yet, sometimes I’d catch my mom looking at me like she was trying to remember something she’d never actually seen.

  I was ten the day it happened.

  The day I got hurt.

  I’d been reckless again. Climbed too high. Laughed too loud. Leapt without thinking.

  The tree was massive. Towering. Its branches reached like arms, daring me higher. I remember the thrill—how the bark scraped my hands, how the wind tangled in my hair like it was cheering me on.

  I wasn’t afraid.

  I was flying.

  Until I wasn’t.

  My foot slipped.

  The branch cracked.

  The world tipped sideways.

  I remember the branch I slammed into. The crack of impact. The rush of air. Then—

  Nothing.

  When I woke, the lights were too bright, and the back of my head throbbed like it had cracked open. A white cast weighed down my left arm, stiff and itchy. My ribs ached with every breath, like something inside me had splintered.

  Wires ran across my chest. A needle in my arm. The machines around me beeped like strange birds.

  I hated them.

  They said I’d been unconscious for hours. That I’d had a concussion. A fractured arm. Cracked ribs.

  That I was lucky.

  They told me to rest.

  But I couldn’t.

  Because underneath the ache, underneath the bruises and bandages, there was something else.

  A pull.

  It buzzed just beneath my ribs. Soft. Persistent. Ancient. Like something had remembered me before I remembered myself.

  It didn’t feel like imagination.

  It felt… old.

  Like the ground had always known where I was supposed to go.

  I couldn’t follow it. I was stuck in that bed.

  Still, it lingered. That ache in the air. That hush in the wind.

  Like it was whispering: come home.

  And that night, I dreamed.

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  Red skies. Screaming metal. Fire and shadow.

  I was running.

  No. Someone was carrying me.

  Arms around me. Their breath came fast. Steps pounding.

  I tried to look up, to see their face, but it blurred in the light.

  Only their voice remained, ragged but soft.

  “Just a little further…”

  Then—

  White light.

  I jolted awake.

  The pull was gone.

  The dream already slipping.

  I sat up and groaned. “Ugh… finally something interesting, and of course I forget it.”

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to shake the unease.

  The machines beeped. The air tasted like bleach and dried flowers.

  I wasn’t afraid. Not really.

  But my hands were clenched in the sheets.

  And I didn’t know why.

  Recovery took time. Weeks blurred past.

  When school started again, I went. Pretended things were normal.

  I wore my hair down, like always.

  I had to, because of the mark.

  Right before my ear, where no one could miss it, an oval the size of my thumb, deep lavender in color. I used to hate it. Now I call it the lavender that stays bloomed.

  Gotta be positive about something, right?

  But school wasn’t kind.

  Not to kids like me.

  The others talked about phones and field trips and Friday night pizza. I didn’t care about any of it.

  I loved the earth. The way it felt beneath my feet. The way flowers tilted toward the sun like they were telling secrets. I could sit for hours just… listening.

  That day at recess, I sat alone beneath the old tree behind the school. A book about plants rested in my lap. I traced a picture of a vine with my finger, wishing I could disappear into the page.

  Then I heard them.

  “Hey, Forest Freak!”

  “What are you, a tree-hugger now?”

  “She’s probably talking to the grass again.”

  Laughter. Fast footsteps. Kicks at the dirt.

  I didn’t look up.

  “Why’re you always on the ground like a weirdo?” one of them jeered. “Gonna start whispering to worms?”

  They yanked my arm.

  “Don’t ignore me! At least I don’t have a cursed mark on my face!”

  I smiled, even though my throat was tight and my fingernails dug into my palm.

  Later, I told my parents I wasn’t hungry. I skipped dinner. Went out into the backyard alone.

  I lay down in the grass, letting it cradle me.

  It smelled like lavender and dirt.

  Like safety I’d forgotten.

  The sky darkened.

  Stars blinked awake.

  And as I stared into the deep blue, I felt it again.

  That pull.

  Stronger this time.

  Like a thread caught in my chest, tugging toward something I couldn’t name.

  My legs moved before I meant them to.

  Like the ground had whispered a secret only I could hear.

  Then—

  A whisper in the wind.

  “They’re waiting.”

  I blinked.

  No one was there.

  Just the wind. The grass. The ache in my ribs.

  I didn’t know what it meant.

  Not then.

  But I never forgot that voice.

  Even when the dream faded.

  Even when the pull went quiet.

  Somewhere out there…

  They were waiting.

  And I think—

  So was I.