#1 — I wish it need not have happened in my time

There were trees everywhere, bark darkened with moisture and canopy so dense that the sky could be seen as shattered glass. The ground beneath my feet was soft, the damp soil formed by last day's rain. Moss on every surface that stayed still long enough.

No roads, no walls, no concrete. Just trees, and trees, and more trees covering a vast plain.

Something moved in the undergrowth — small, fast, gone before I could turn my head. Birds called from somewhere high. Insects hummed in the space. Water ran nearby, I could feel but not see it — the stream seemed like no human had ever tried to disrupt its flow.

I was walking, not toward anything, not away from anything, just walking, because the ground kept going and my feet kept following.

There I found a familiar tree...

The one, taller than the rest, pulling my gaze without asking for it. A broad canopy wide enough to cover the sky. The leaves were dense and layered above them. They smelled resinous, sharp, distinct.

The smell of mangoes like always... both sweet and rotten ones. The ground was smushy with all the rotten ones. The tree's root gave a good shape to sit upon.

I sat down. The bark pressed into my spine, warm from the inside.

I had a knife in my hands, I scraped the knife against the bark. The wood was so dense and it resisted my motion. Each stroke took effort, the blade catching on the grain, peeling away thin chunks of bark that fell between my feet. I didn't look at what I was carving. My hands knew what to carve. The motion was something I could control, my hands were moving on their own — pull, turn, pull. I was carving something, like marking I was here.

It stayed unfinished but I didn't mind.

A fire already burning, close — I didn't light it. It was simply there the way the knife was there, warm and crackling softly, throwing pale yellow light across the roots and the forest. I sat between the fire and the tree. In the dark, someone was there peeking from the shr...

I opened my eyes.

My ceiling. There was a cradle across the room, stuffed sharks and fish swaying above it.

I heard voices of panic through the walls. Grown-ups, some of them, too loud, as if they had forgotten kids lived here.

I got out of bed.

The floor was cool. A thin line of warm light ran under the door — several figures were moving in the light. Shadows grabbing things, shadows talking about running away, shadows genuinely crying. I moved to take a peek.

Creaak.

A woman's hand swung the door open. She was tall with a worried face — trying to hide the fear behind it, not quite winning. Her eyes glanced at me, a quick up and down.

Her voice came out soft, likely trying not to frighten me.

"Carry her outside and wait, don't come back inside until I say so."

Her face broke for a second, just once.

"We'll be safe, I promise, so please go now, son."

I walked to the cradle. The baby was awake, looking at me with her wide, wet eyes. She reached up for my nose, her grip tiny, warm, gripping nothing but trying anyway. I lifted her, wrapped her in a clean white towel. Heavy. Heavier than he thought. I had never got to hold her before. She poked at my face, quiet and playful, staring at me with those innocent eyes, like nothing in the world was wrong.

But she didn't know.

I moved to the living room. A dim bulb, warm and orange, throwing uneven light across the walls.

Grown-ups moving through the room, they were still blurry to me as if I was...I don't know why they were blurry. Two. Three. Grabbing clothes, papers, something wrapped in cloth. One of them louder than the rest — that voice, the one they use when the children aren't supposed to hear what is being said. The baby flinched and started to cry. My arms were beginning to ache from her weight but I held tighter, pressing her against my chest until I could feel her heartbeat against mine — fast, small, steady thuds.

The woman touched one of them on the face. Everything went quiet. The quarrel stopped, they moved to do their tasks.

Hands on my back. A large, firm man with a grey steady moustache guiding me toward the door. He pushed me gently outside.

When his hands touched my shoulders, something moved through me. Not pain. A current — hot, thin, sharp — tracing from his palms down through my arms and into my chest, like a wire being pulled through the inside of my bones.

He let go.

The current didn't.

It sat in my hands. A hum beneath the skin, faint, rhythmic, like a second heartbeat that didn't belong to me. I kept opening and closing my fists.

"Wait here."

The grass was wet under my feet. Each blade distinct. The house threw a rectangle of yellow light across the ground behind me. Voices inside were muffled — just shapes of sound now. The rhythm of panic without the words.

The baby had her fist in her mouth, looking at the sky. I too looked at the sky.

No stars. The sky sat low and heavy, dark pressing down like a ceiling. The air smelled like wet soil and something metallic underneath — faint, the way blood smells before you see it. It was strangely quiet.

The door opened.

The woman ran toward me. Calling out. The sounds came apart before they reached me.

"...Ra....."

The sky changed colour.

".....ira...."

Something tore across the valley — an angelic voice...no, it was a scream itself — a sound that tried to reach for beauty and missed, landing between a hymn and death.

"....ASHIRA—"

A beam of golden light fell from above. Not falling — it was descending. Deliberate, impossibly bright, patient in its violence. Everything in its path froze for a second and vanished — the trees, the ground, the air and the silence. Not destroyed — it just ceased to exist. As if it had never been there.

The wave reached me. A burning sting on the skin that I always hated, then heat, then something I had no word for.

I immediately pulled the baby into my chest and crouched, closing my eyes with a prayer.

.....

On a loop, every day same dream. This same dream appeared on his mind, more like a loop.

"Was it really a dream of just a memory", He notes it down his diary