Breglio and the Nest of Time

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The tree hadn't fallen because no one had let it fall. It stood alone in a hollow of fog, its branches grown into petrified thoughts, its trunk crisscrossed by veins that shimmered like frozen timelines. Breglio had found it without looking for it—or perhaps whatever lay dormant within it was looking for it. In the knothole of one of the upper, gnarled spurs—a good three lantern steps above the ground—something flickered. Not a nest in the conventional sense. More like a web of smoldering substance that could neither be grasped nor clearly named. It pulsed slowly, like a breathed sound. Not alive—but not dead either. Breglio placed his fingers against the rough bark. No moss, no resin, just crystallized resistance. He climbed slowly, his soot-stained lantern swinging from a hook on his belt, the rope at his belt loose in case time itself played tricks on him. When he reached the shimmering structure, he paused. It was round but asymmetrical, spun from threads of light that didn't shine, but reminded. You could watch them growing—as if the nest were still in the process of being created. He sat carefully in the hollow of the branch. The stone was warm. Not from the day, but from something deeper. Breglio looked at the nest. Not a single sound. Not even the rustling of the cloak remained. The forest around him held its breath. He didn't know why he stayed. Perhaps it was the pounding in his chest that suddenly seemed foreign. Perhaps the fact that the nest was responding to him—barely visible, but palpable. The threads trembled softly when he breathed. So he stopped breathing. And the nest calmed down. Hours passed. Maybe days. He slept. And in that sleep, he entered a memory that was not his. A place he had never been, but that his heart knew. A view across a valley made of light. A voice that spoke his name—not as one calls it, but as one means it. When he awoke, the nest had changed. From the center now protruded something: a being, half form, half premonition. It had no eyes, yet it saw. No limbs, yet it stood. It was young—and at the same time infinitely old. "You stayed," it said—without a sound, but with impact. Breglio just nodded. "I am what should have been forgotten," the being said. "But you reminded me." "What... are you?" "A possibility. A forgotten hour. The memory of a path not taken." Breglio felt tears behind his eyes, but they didn't come. The moment was too big for something as small as crying. The being extended an extension—more a gesture than an arm—and touched his forehead. A flood of images rushed through him. Lives he had never led. Places that never happened. Voices that never called to him—and yet were familiar. Then the creature detached itself, sank into the mist beneath the branch, became smaller, quieter—and was gone. The nest remained. Its edges trembled more faintly.