Page 44 of Sage Haven
Me.
I didn’t know why I did that.
Why I’d spent so long folding myself into the smallest version of who I was.
Especially when I had always dreamed of something bigger.
Wilder.
Outside these walls of normalcy. Even when it was dangerous.
Even when it hurt.
I wanted a life with purpose. To wake up with a fire I couldn’t smother. A hunger that pulled me toward something, instead of always running away.
But since I’d moved here, that dream had thinned into a mirage.
Always close enough to see.
Never close enough to touch.
At the festival, just for a moment, I thought I felt it.
That pulse of possibility.
The music in the air, the blur of lights, the way strangers laughed like they belonged to each other.
I thought maybe I could belong too.
But the feeling slipped through me like smoke, and I’d been chasing it ever since.
I kept hoping it would find me.
That one day, it would just… happen.
That something would click into place and make it all make sense.
But hope like that is dangerous.
It keeps you waiting.
And the longer I waited, the heavier the ache became.
I was stuck.
Caught between the safety of predictability and the pull of something wild I couldn’t name.
And maybe the question wasn’t whether I was ready.
Maybe the question was:
What was I still so afraid of?
***
That afternoon, the sun hung low on the horizon. Dragging the day out, stretching the light thin before the dark came. The sky was bruised with color—soft golds bleeding into purples and oranges.
I watched it from my window for too long.
