It was the sort of rain that put everything quiet, as if the sky were holding its breath. The sort that softened the world to watercolor at the windowpane. Elena was hunched on the frayed velvet armchair, a book spread on her lap, but untouched for hours. Beyond, the wind played its mournful melody through the trees, and the smell of damp earth came in through the broken window.
That was when the knock arrived.
Three slow, deliberate raps.
She stood still. No one ever ventured this far—not without phoning first. Her cottage was situated at the edge of the woods, a good twenty-minute walk from the nearest road. Visitors were uncommon. Unannounced visitors? Practically unheard of.
Elena stood, heart beating faster, and approached the door. From the small frosted window, she could just discern a tall figure, shadowed by rain and darkness. Something in her chest contracted—not quite fear, not quite interest. A feeling that something was changing.
She opened the door a fraction.
The man on the porch was dripping wet, his black coat stuck to him like a second skin. His hair was stuck to his forehead, and water fell from his chin. But his eyes—his eyes were steady and bright, as if not affected by the storm.
"I'm sorry to bother you," he said, his voice low and soothing, "but I believe I'm meant to be here."
Elena blinked. "Meant to be here?"
He nodded. "I know it sounds crazy. I'm. I don't know how to describe it. I didn't know where I was headed. Only that I needed to locate this house.
Elena slowed, then pushed open the door. She didn't know why. Maybe it was the way he phrased it—with no hope, only a silence. Or maybe it was the odd spark of identification she sensed, like recalling a dream you know you never had.
"Come in," she told him.
He stepped inside, bringing with him the scent of rain and pine. She offered him a towel, and he took it gratefully, drying his face and body with a sigh.
They sat across from each other by the fireplace. The silence stretched, not awkward, but electric. Like the space between two notes in a song, the lyrics that has a short break.
Finally, he spoke.
“My name is Ezu. I’ve been… searching. For something. Or someone.” He paused. “You.”
Elena gasped. "Me? I've never met you."
"Never in this life," he replied.
Her heart faltered. "You mean—?"
Ezu smiled weakly. "I don't know what I mean. Only that when I passed by this house, when I saw you, I felt as if something locked into place. As if I've been walking around with a rusty old key my entire life, and you're the door."
The fire spat between them. Outside, the storm broke, as if listening.
The fire crackled, and a small ember shot up, and Elena leaned forward, examining Ezu's face. There was a stillness to him, but it was like the stillness at the eye of a storm—intentional, heavy. As if he'd endured something, borne something. Or was still bearing it.
She curled her hand around the hot mug she'd brewed for him—chamomile and mint—and asked, "Why now? Why tonight?"
Ezu gazed down at the steam rising from his cup, as though it might contain answers he couldn't extract in words.
"I dreamed of this place," he said softly. "For years. Always the same: rain, a red door, your eyes coming back to me. But tonight. it wasn't a dream. It was a pull. Like the forest recognized where to lead me."
Elena's throat constricted. She hadn't informed anyone—not since she'd been a girl—that she had once dreamed of a man standing in the doorway of her house during a storm. A man with eyes full of memory, although she had never laid eyes on him previously. The details had always remained fuzzy, like smoke. until now.
She stood and walked across the room, opening the drawer under the bookshelf and pulling out an old sketchbook. She turned to the third page and handed it to him.
Ezu looked down. It was a pencil sketch, smudged and worn, but irrefutable.
It was him.
A younger one, maybe, but the same eyes. The same quiet. Sketched from memory. From dreams.
He looked up, and there was no longer fear in his eyes—only recognition.
What's this?" he said.
"I don't know," Elena whispered. "But I think. we've been holding the same story in various pieces."
The wind outside had subsided now. The rain had reduced to a whisper. It seemed the woods were listening.
Ezu pulled his hand out of his coat pocket and produced something small and bound in linen. He put it down on the table between them.
"I stumbled on this years ago, hidden under the roots of an ancient ash. I never had any idea what it was—why I was holding on to it—but I couldn't bear to part with it."
Elena unwrapped it gently.
It was a locket. Plain, antique. Familiar.
Her breath hitched as she opened it.
A shadowy photograph was inside—a photograph of her mother, when she was a young woman, and a man she did not know…but who resembled Ezu.
“I think,” he said slowly, “we’re connected by more than just dreams.”
She nodded, the weight of it all settling gently around her, like snowfall.
“I think,” she echoed, “we’re part of something waiting to be remembered.”
And in that moment, the rain stopped.
And in that small, still room on the edge of the world, two strangers sat across from one another—no longer strangers. Something long-forgotten stirred in the quiet, a lost thread weaving itself back into the fabric of time.
Not everything can be explained.
But some doors open not to the world beyond—but to the pieces of ourselves we believed were lost forever.
React
