Retreat by Paul Brookes

The sanctuary was hidden deep in the glaucous forest, a place where the air smelled of earth and sky. Every tree seemed to hold secrets, their ancient bark etched with claw-carved symbols and stories older than memory. The leaves whispered as the wind stirred them—pages turning, feather-scribed in some forgotten language. The sky above mirrored the movement below, clouds trailing like long strands of cirrus pages, delicate and ever-changing.

I stood there, at the threshold of this living, breathing library, my mind as wild as the forest around me. Each step I took felt as if I was plunging deeper into its mystery, the soft moss beneath my feet absorbing the weight of my thoughts. The ground trembled ever so slightly, as though the earth itself was exhaling, and the trees swayed, their branches moving in darkling curves that caught fragments of light. The sun filtered down through the thick canopy, refracted by the leaves, and it seemed as though letters of fire danced in the air, twining around my thoughts.

The wind stirred again, this time more forcefully, and I inhaled its cool breath. With it came ideas—wild, untamed, as though carried from distant places on gusts too strong to ignore. Each gust seemed to blow a new thought into my mind, a seed carried on the wind, ready to take root. But the thoughts were not calming; they were quick and sharp, like a stone skipped across the surface of water.

My retreat was never the peaceful escape I longed for. Instead, it bouldered through me, as if a stone had been hurled into the depths of my being, sending ripples that spread outward, endlessly forward. The tranquility of the forest belied the turmoil inside. Every thought that stirred in my mind felt like a fire being kindled—a spark catching dry leaves. It burned through me, bright and consuming, remaking everything in its path. My thoughts, once scattered like dandelion seeds, now took shape, reforming into something new and unfamiliar.

And yet, amidst the flames, there was creation. The destruction brought forth growth—fresh shoots of ideas, sprouting and unfurling in my head. The fire remade me, and the sanctuary was not what it seemed. It was no longer a place of quiet reflection, but of transformation, where the very chaos of thought became fertile ground.

I looked around once more at the forest, at the cirrus clouds, the bark-bright trees, and the earth that felt alive beneath me. The sanctuary was not still. It moved with the same force that propelled my mind, a constant shift from one form to another, like clouds becoming rain or flame turning to ash.

This place—my retreat—was never calm. It was always becoming, always remaking itself, just as I was.