running away

Chapter 14


He kept going. Branches whipped past him.
Leaves broke beneath his feet. He had no destination.
He only knew he could not stand beside those two trees anymore. Every few steps his mind replayed the same moment.
Rook seeing him, shouting his name, noticing Corey, running, reaching all for what, nothing.
Nifty ran harder. He wanted to scream.
He wanted to laugh. Rook was alive.
That should have been enough. It wasn't.
Because now Nifty knew something worse than wondering whether he would ever see home again. He knew what it felt like to have home within reach and lose it a second time.
Corey did not follow. Every instinct told him to.
But he had spent enough time earning Nifty's trust to understand when following would only make things worse. So he stayed beside the cabin.
He looked at the two trees. Ordinary bark.
Ordinary leaves. Ordinary darkness between them.
Corey stepped closer again. He examined the ground.
He looked up through the branches. He even reached into the empty space one more time.
Nothing. "What in the world..." He stopped himself.
That phrase suddenly felt inadequate. Corey returned to the porch and sat on the steps.
The cabin door remained open behind him. Inside, Nifty's computer still glowed.
The NFT collection they had spent so long preparing was finally live. Only minutes earlier, that had felt enormous.
Now Corey could barely think about it. His attention kept returning to the darkness between those trees.
And to the face on the other side that had looked at Nifty like someone seeing a ghost. Eventually Corey went inside.
The cabin felt wrong without Nifty in it. He walked to the desk.
Beside the computer lay the drawing Nifty had been looking at earlier. Rook.
Corey picked it up carefully. He compared the face on the paper with the one burned into his memory.
The nick in the ear. The crooked grin.
The shape of the eyes. There was no question.
Nifty had drawn him. Long before tonight.
Corey set the page back exactly where he had found it. Then he noticed something else.
The leaf from Nifty's walk rested nearby. Beside it sat the strange stone.
Corey looked from them to the drawing. Then toward the open door.
He had questions. More questions than he could count.
But questions could wait. Right now, Nifty was somewhere alone in the
woods. Nifty finally stopped running beside a shallow creek.
He bent forward, hands on his knees, trying to breathe. The water moved quietly over stones.
For a long time he listened to it. His anger slowly lost its sharpest edges.
What remained hurt more. Rook had been there.
That part mattered. Nifty lowered himself onto a fallen tree.
He closed his eyes. He could still hear the distorted shout.
"NIFTY!" He had spent so long terrified that he was forgetting everyone. Tonight proved something he had not allowed himself to hope for.
They had not disappeared. Home had not disappeared.
Rook had not disappeared. Whatever Nifty had seen, wherever that opening had come from, one truth remained.
Rook was alive. Nifty wiped his face with the back of his hand.
He stared into the creek. "I saw you," he whispered.
The woods gave no answer. Nifty looked back in the direction of the cabin.
For the first time since the crack vanished, he realized Corey was probably sitting there wondering whether he was coming back. Nifty sighed.
He was still angry. Still confused.
Still hurt. But he was not alone.
And somewhere, impossibly, neither was Rook. The door had closed.
Nifty had no idea whether it would ever open again. But now he knew there was someone on the other side.
What stayed with Nifty most was not only Rook's face. It was everything behind him.
For a few impossible seconds Nifty had seen home - the sky, the plants, the colors and shapes he had spent a year trying to hold together on paper. Rook had made the moment personal, but the loss was larger than one person.
Home was still there. Nifty was the one who had disappeared.
Nifty stayed beside the creek until the anger inside him had burned down into something quieter. Rook was alive.
That thought should have made everything easier. Instead, it left one question circling through his head: how do I get to the other side?
He climbed away from the creek and found a broad rock overlooking the valley. From there the human world stretched beneath him in layers of dark forest, scattered lights, and distant roads.
Nifty sat with his elbows on his knees and stared into it. He thought about Rook running toward the opening.
He thought about that reaching hand. He thought about the instant the purple fracture snapped shut.
Just then a branch snapped behind him.