Land Of Words

The hour was well past midnight. The house lay wrapped in an uncanny silence, as if even the walls had stopped breathing and the windows fixed their gaze on the night, neither seeking sight nor wishing to be seen. A thin curtain trembled with a dead rhythm in a cold, invisible breeze, less like something alive, more like a corpse being toyed with by the wind. The window was ajar, and moonlight poured its trembling weight across the walls. The night smelled ancient: damp earth long forgotten, burnt paper, and unuttered cries.

I sat on the single wooden chair in my room, its creaking an old intimacy between us, facing a blank notebook I often called mybattlefield, pen heavy in hand. Nights had long become sleepless, not due to insomnia, but an urgent necessity. As if something in the darkness was calling me by my name.

Every night, footsteps echoed in the dead labyrinth of evening: neither loud enough to startle, nor faint enough to ignore. Whispers through bone, word, flesh that only I could hear.

Tonight, like every night, I rose when the footsteps turned. With slow steps, as if pulled by invisible strings from my bones, I moved to the window. Outside, nothing: only moonlight and an alley hidden by its own silence. But something was different.

A fleeting shadow crossed the opposite wall, not human, not animal, not clear enough to name. It was as though something that once existed—or never did—was there. I feared not, as a familiarity nested in me, telling me the shadow was a part of me, lost over time.

I returned to my seat and grabbed the pen. But my hands wouldn’t write. Only a single word lodged in my mind: “return.” The blank page swallowed it. And then something opened, inside me, or beyond me. A faint, fractured voice echoed from nowhere, “Save me…”

I trembled, knowing too well that once started, I could not stop. The shadows within me still held me, but a small light, like the final breath of a flame, lit in my chest. I walked, word by word, across the silent expanse of the page, which was no longer paper but a land where each word laid a brick on forgotten walls.

The next night, I wrote again, not hoping for an answer, but out of habit, as natural as breathing. But this time, something changed. The ink, which always dried before night’s end, flowed more freely—not out of joy, but of total surrender.

Minutes? Hours? Time lost all meaning in that room. But something within me cracked, not a mirror, but a shell delaying its break. And once more, the footsteps returned.

My pen slipped from my fingers; the clatter on the wooden desk sounded like a gunshot in the stillness. I stood. Closed the window. No longer could I bear the footsteps, the echoes, the tremulous moonlight. No more. Something within me had broken—or finally awakened. I dressed quietly, the scrape of my shoelace filling the silent room. I opened the door, and the world beyond was no longer the same.

The air didn’t smell like before. It carried char, rusty metal, and rain that never fell. The alley was no longer just an alley; the street, the pavement, all were mystifying. In their place, a strange land unfolded: half-ruined buildings, walls pockmarked with bullet holes, windowpanes shattered, heavy silence broken only by a faint wind that lifted ashes into lonely dances.

I took a step forward without knowing my destination. Here, the city was not deserted. Shadows passed by, not seeing me, absorbed in their own tasks, holding letters, dragging small suitcases, pale faces, steps fast and weary. They all knew where they were going except me.

A broken sign, half-buried in mud, bore a faded name: “Word Station.” A platform once traversed by trains, now buried under moss and earth. As I moved on, the street shifted before me. Shop signs vanished. Tree skeletons, like fragments of bone, stood by the walls. Debris no longer seemed like debris, but nameless, decaying artifacts.

Then I realized: There was no return home.

Something fell from the sky, not light or rain, but the smell of burning, the smell of war: old blood, earthen trenches, frozen cries. A tattered newspaper drifted to my feet. I picked it up, read: “The city has surrendered. Invaders have shattered the final lines of defense. The voice of resistance was silenced at the last station.”

My hands shook; my tongue froze. No date, no names, no nation. And yet, I knew. This was the world of exile. Where theWord-Girlhad gone.

Above me soared a winged shadow, voiceless, like a nightmare that screams in the heart, yet utters no sound.

From the corner of my eye, I saw someone, someone walking closer—or did I walk toward them?

On a rusted bench sat an old woman, hair like scattered silver clouds, eyes fixed on the horizon. As I passed, she spoke without moving her lips, “You’re searching, aren’t you? Late, but time remains… if a word still awaits to be said.”

Startled, I froze. I wanted to ask something, but she had vanished. The bench was still warm, but she was gone, like mist. Then a voice, familiar beyond measure, echoed, “If you still want to see me… come! I’m here.”

I followed down a half-ruined street, past buildings that once sheltered homes, now hollowed out with broken doors and empty windows—like faded memories. Graffiti sprawled across walls:“We fight for our pens!”“Words cracked, but remained unbroken!”

Up ahead lay a half-lit hall with tall windows draped in dusty curtains. And there she stood, theWord-Girl—my heart called her by her name. Somehow, she was me, and I was her. Same eyes, same hair, even the same wounds, yet in her gaze lay a strange depth, a quiet forged by years of bearing silence.

No words passed between us. Around us, people moved, unseeing—perhaps they only saw one of us.