After The Well, But Before

Six Months Earlier…

From inside my mind, a scream—
not mine.
Not from this time.

It came from before, way before. A smaller mouth, stretched open in a soundless shape—eyes wide, body still. It wasn’t panic. Not exactly. Like something remembered all at once, too fast to stay inside.

I was young. Too young to know what anything looked like beyond what my eyes could see. Roads were just long lines a car drove on. Trees were tall shapes with no way over them, only under. Every open field felt like the edge of the world, a very large world. I didn’t know where I was—only that I was going forward. Not walking. Not flying. Just moving. Forward. Rapidly in a smooth motion.

Most of it was a blur. Like riding through something too fast to catch. But some things stuck. More like fading—in and out. Sometimes slow. Other times so fast it felt like teleporting.

A scattering of painted boards, each with a word or a letter—none of them clear on their own, but together they scratched at something familiar.
One said Loop.
Another, just flec.
A third was upside down.

I didn’t know the words then. But I know what they were trying to say now.

Reflection Loop.

Back then, it was just broken signage and splintered paint.
Like someone had tried to tell a story but dropped the pieces along the way.

And then the land began to change.

The fields flattened. The greens dulled. The trees disappeared. Hills rose and hardened—no soil, just layered stone the color of rust and dried blood. The sky turned a deeper blue, stretched wider. The stillness of it all wasn’t peaceful.
It felt held.
Like the world was waiting for me to realize something.
But I never did.

Just before it got too strange—too large or too red or too quiet—

I woke up.

Always before the fear arrived.
Always before the land finished speaking.

But the scream had already left its mark.