He couldn’t remember why he had come to the lake. Maybe he had followed a dream, or maybe the dream had followed him. Either way, he found himself standing on a soft slope, watching the water hold the evening light as gently as a cat cupping warmth in its fur.
People wandered in the distance—alone, or in pairs, like punctuation marks scattered by someone rewriting their life. No one spoke. Their silence had a strange weight, as if every person carried an unnamed question inside them. He felt it too, resting somewhere between his ribs.
The circles began appearing shortly after he arrived. They floated above the hills, drifting with a slowness that seemed deliberate. Each one pulsed faintly, as though syncing with a rhythm far older than anything human. The colors—soft, impossible pastels—reminded him of the exact moment before waking from a dream, when everything is both clear and vanishing.
He tried to convince himself they were some kind of optical illusion: light catching particles, atmospheric conditions, the mind filling gaps. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that the circles were aware of him. Not watching him in a threatening way—just acknowledging him, like two strangers silently nodding in a grocery store aisle.
A woman stood near the shore, her figure small against the expanse. She looked at the circles with the calm curiosity of someone who had seen strange things before and learned not to ask too much. For a moment, he imagined walking over to her and asking if she knew what the circles were. Maybe she would say yes. Maybe she would say no. Maybe she would tell him something else entirely, something like:
“They appear when the world is trying to remember you.”
A breeze moved through the valley, barely strong enough to disturb the grass. One of the circles drifted lower, hovering just above the surface of the lake. Ripples spread out from an unseen point, as if the water were quietly answering it.
He watched until the sun slipped behind the hills. The circles glowed a little brighter, as though illuminated from within by the fading remnants of the day. The people began walking away, returning to whatever they had left behind before arriving here.
He remained, listening to the lake breathe, waiting for something he couldn’t name. It wasn’t hope exactly, and it wasn’t fear. More like the sensation of standing on the threshold of a forgotten room in his own life.
When the last circle dissolved into the dim sky, he finally turned to leave. And although he hadn’t learned anything concrete, he felt a slight, inexplicable shift inside him—like a door nudging open somewhere deep, inviting him to step through whenever he was ready.
