In daylight, the forest looked ordinary.

That was the lie of it.

Sunlight filtered through the branches in thin, patient lines, dappling the ground with gold and green. The damp smell of rot and moss from the night before had softened into something almost pleasant. Birds hopped between low branches, unbothered, and somewhere deeper in, water moved lazily over stone.

If I hadn't been there the night before, I might have laughed at myself.

We stood at the tree line without speaking. The road behind us hummed faintly with the sounds of the town going about its business-doors opening, voices calling, life continuing as it always had.

I took the first step.

I didn't decide to. My body simply moved, drawn forward by a quiet insistence I didn't yet know how to resist. A moment later, I heard Oisín behind me, his boots scuffing softly against the earth.

Neither of us questioned it.

The ruins revealed themselves slowly, as if daylight demanded patience. Moss dulled the stones, and without the night's shadows and strange warmth, they seemed smaller. Less important. Just another forgotten scatter of rock in a country full of them.

Still, my pulse quickened when I knelt beside the carvings.

I brushed my fingers along the etched lines, tracing shapes I recognised now without fully understanding. The figures were clearer in the sun-wolves caught mid-motion, jaws open, bodies half-turned, guarding smaller forms clustered close to their legs.

Protecting.

"They didn't carve these for beauty," I murmured.

Oisín didn't answer right away. He sat a few paces back, arms resting on his knees, watching the forest rather than the stones. His posture was loose, but his eyes never stopped moving.

My eyes lingered on the central slab. In daylight, the seam was barely visible. If I hadn't known to look for it, I might have missed it entirely.

"It looks harmless," I said.

"That's what worries me," he replied.

I glanced back at him. "You believe it, then?"

He exhaled slowly, gaze fixed somewhere between the trees. "I believe something happened here."

That was as close to certainty as he seemed willing to offer.

After a moment, he spoke again, quieter this time.

"My father used to talk about things like this when he drank."

I stilled.

"He'd say the land was watched once. Guarded," Oisín continued. "Not by saints or kings. By something older. Something that didn't need permission."

I turned fully toward him now.

"He said they were beasts," Oisín went on, his mouth tightening. "Men who could become wolves. That they bled for the land so the people didn't have to."

The words settled heavily between us.

"He said when they vanished, everything else fell apart," he said. "The land was left open. Easy to take."

I thought of the carvings. The clustered figures. The watching shapes.

"And did you believe him?" I asked.

Oisín huffed a short, humourless breath. "I thought he was drunk."

He hesitated, fingers digging into the dirt.

"But sometimes," he added, "I think if they'd still been here... maybe my mother wouldn't have left."

The sentence cut off sharply, as if he hadn't meant to say it aloud.

"She ran off with a British soldier," he said, voice flat. "He was stationed nearby. If those things were real-if the land was protected-maybe he wouldn't have been here at all. Or maybe she wouldn't have gone. Or maybe..." He shook his head once. "Maybe I wouldn't have had to grow up so fast."

I didn't know what to say to that. There was no comfort in contradiction.

I looked back at the stone beneath my hands, suddenly aware of how warm it felt again, even in the daylight.

"If they were protectors," I said slowly, "why did they disappear?"

Oisín's gaze flicked to me then, sharp and searching.

"Maybe," he said, "they were driven out."

The forest stirred. A breeze moved through the trees, carrying with it the faintest pressure against my skin-like a hand brushing past, testing.

I pulled my hand away from the stone.

Neither of us suggested leaving.

And that, more than anything, frightened me.

We stayed longer than we meant to.

The sun had shifted by the time I noticed it, light thinning through the trees as the afternoon wore on. The forest didn't press in the way it had at night. It felt almost companionable now, like it was listening rather than watching.

I sat back against a low stone, knees drawn up, while Oisín remained where he was, close enough that I could feel his presence without having to look at him. There was an ease to it that surprised me. We had no history to lean on, no shared childhood, no expectations to meet.

"That's why people talk," I said eventually. "Because there's nothing else to do."

Oisín gave a faint, noncommittal sound.

"The town's small," I continued. "It feeds on itself. Everyone knows who you are before you've decided it for yourself."

He glanced at me then. "And who are you meant to be?"

I smiled, though it didn't quite reach my eyes. "Someone agreeable. Someone who doesn't cause trouble. Someone who stays."

The last word lingered.

He looked back toward the trees. "They don't like people who leave either."

"No," I said. "They like people who want to leave even less."

That earned a short breath of laughter from him-surprised, as if it had escaped without permission.

We talked then, not about anything important at first. About neighbours who pretended not to see one another in the street. About the way the priest spoke as if guilt were a shared language. About how everyone swore things were better now, because the country was free.

"Independent," Oisín said, tasting the word. "That's what they call it."

I nodded. "My father says it like he's convincing himself."

"Mine used to," Oisín replied. "Before he stopped talking much at all."

Silence settled again, heavier this time but not uncomfortable.

"When I was younger," I said, "I remember the adults going quiet when the radio came on. Especially if it was about the North."

His jaw tightened slightly. "Same."

"They'd lower their voices," I went on. "As if we couldn't hear them anyway. As if not saying it aloud would keep it from crossing the border."

"And now?" he asked.

"Now they pretend it's not their problem," I said. "That it's contained. That violence knows where it's meant to stay."

Oisín picked at the dirt with his fingers. "Violence never stays where it's told."

I studied him then, really studied him. The way he carried himself like someone used to watching for danger. The way his eyes tracked movement without effort. Protective, always. As if the world were something that had already proven itself unreliable.

"Do you ever think," I asked quietly, "that all of it seeps into the ground?"

He looked at me sharply. "What do you mean?"

"All the unrest," I said. "The wars, the famines, the grudges no one admits to carrying. As if the land remembers even when people pretend not to."

He was silent for a long moment.

"My father said that too," he admitted. "That the land holds on to things. That it knows who's loyal to it and who isn't."

I felt a strange warmth spread through my chest at that-not comfort exactly, but recognition.

"I don't want to stay," I said suddenly.

The words surprised me with their force.

Oisín didn't look shocked. He only nodded, as if I'd finally said something honest.

"I don't think I do either," he replied. "But leaving doesn't always mean escaping."

We sat there, two people shaped by the same place in different ways, bound by something neither of us had asked for. The forest hummed softly around us, alive with small sounds, indifferent and attentive all at once.

When Oisín finally stood, he offered me his hand without hesitation.

I took it.

For a brief, disorienting moment, it felt like the ground steadied beneath us-as if the land itself approved of the connection.

I didn't mention it.

Neither did he.

And that was how I knew this was becoming something more than coincidence.

We left the forest together.

For a while, neither of us spoke. Our hands remained linked as if it were the most natural thing in the world, fingers fitting easily, palms warm despite the cool air. The path widened as we walked, trees thinning, light breaking through in familiar patterns.

It was only when the road came into view that our hands slipped apart.

Not abruptly. Not awkwardly. Just enough space opening between us for the world to reassert itself.

Oisín stopped first.

I turned, already knowing he wouldn't follow me the rest of the way. He stood with his hands shoved into his coat pockets, weight shifted back on his heels, watching me with an expression I couldn't name.

"I'll see you," he said.

It wasn't a promise. It didn't need to be.

I nodded. "Yes."

We lingered longer than necessary, both of us pretending there was something else to say. Then I took a step back, then another. When I reached the bend in the road, I looked over my shoulder.

He was still there.

So was I.

Eventually, I turned and walked on.

Home smelled like boiled potatoes and turf smoke. Familiar, grounding. My mother was in the kitchen, radio turned low but not off, the murmur of voices threading through the room as I slipped past.

"...civil rights marchers in the North," the announcer said, voice careful, clipped. "Reports are still coming in, but witnesses say police opened fire. Several injured. At least two dead."

I froze in the hallway.

The words settled slowly, like ash.

My mother tutted softly, shaking her head. "Terrible business," she murmured, as if distance softened impact. "It'll only make things worse."

I moved to my room without speaking, closing the door gently behind me.

The radio's voice carried faintly through the walls, listing places I recognised. Streets I'd walked once. People who spoke like us, only harder, sharper around the edges.

Something shifted inside me.

It wasn't fear.

It was heat.

A pressure bloomed low in my chest, spreading outward, filling my limbs with a restless energy that made it hard to sit still. My pulse quickened, but it wasn't panic. It felt... right. Purposeful.

Strong.

I clenched my hands, surprised at the force in them. My nails bit into my palms, sharp enough to sting. My senses sharpened in strange, disorienting ways-the tick of the clock sounded too loud, the scent of turf smoke too thick, the house too small to contain me.

I closed my eyes and breathed, but the feeling didn't fade.

Instead, images surfaced unbidden. Running across open ground. Muscles burning, stretching, becoming. A low, resonant sound vibrating in my chest-not quite a voice, not quite a thought.

I pressed my back to the wall, heart hammering now, not with fear but with something dangerously close to exhilaration.

This wasn't grief for strangers.

This was response.

As if the violence, the injustice, the imbalance had struck a chord inside me-something old and coiled, something that recognised the sound of threat.

I thought of the forest. Of the stones. Of Oisín standing watchful at the edge of the trees.

My hands trembled.

For the first time, I understood with absolute certainty that whatever had been sleeping beneath the land had begun to wake.

And it was awake in me.