The silence is of the most depressing thing that I fear
Not the kind that comes before sleep or follows a gentle evening. No—hers was the silence that pressed against the walls of their modest home in Wenesó like a living thing. It lived beneath the floorboards, seeped into the corners, curled under the staircase. Even as a small child of five, she felt it in her bones, the way a storm senses lightning before it strikes.
She remembered the house differently than most children remember theirs. Not by colors or decorations or rooms, but by sounds—
or the lack of them.
The clink of spoon against porcelain when her mother stirred her tea just a little too forcefully.
The distant thud when her father closed the door before leaving for the forest outpost.
Her grandmother Edma's soft humming drifting from the kitchen like a fragile thread trying to stitch together what was already coming undone.
When Lucy was six, she discovered that the space between her parents was larger than any room in their house.
Her father, Robert Desmond, was a gentle man, even when tired, even when frustrated. He worked as a forest officer stationed near Evergreen Forest—the ancient woodland that bordered Wenesó like a sleeping giant. He smelled of pine sap and damp earth, and whenever he came home, he lifted Lucy into his arms with a tired smile that made her feel safe in a way her mother never could.
But he was rarely home.
Most days, his absence became the quiet shape of their household. On the nights he did return, he sank into the old armchair by the window, staring out at nothing while Helena, his wife, moved around the house with the precision of a surgeon—swift, silent, and painfully cold.
Helena Desmond had once been known as the warmest doctor in the Wenesó City Hospital. That warmth, however, seemed to remain at her workplace. She shed it like a mask the moment she stepped through the front door. At home, her voice was clipped, her patience thin, and her affection—at least toward her daughter—almost accidental.
Lucy learned not to disturb her mother, the same way birds instinctively avoid predators without being taught.
She learned instead to stay near her grandmother.
Edma was the only softness in Lucy's world.
With silver-streaked hair always tied in a bun and eyes that held both sorrow and strength, she filled the spaces of the house that Lucy's parents had emptied. She hummed old songs from the "old country"—a place Lucy knew only from stories, a land of mountains and rivers and creatures that lived in folklore.
Edma's hands were always warm, even in winter. When Lucy crawled into her lap at the age of seven, listening to the rain hit the windows, she asked, "Why does Mama always look angry?"
Edma didn't lie.
She sighed, smoothing back Lucy's hair. "Your mother… carries storms inside her. Storms she never learned to let out gently."
"Does Papa have storms too?"
"Everyone does," her grandmother murmured. "But your father… he hides his in the forest."
Lucy curled against her and closed her eyes. Edma's heartbeat was a quiet drum—steady, comforting, alive. It drowned out the rising voices downstairs, her parents' words sharp as shattered glass.
That night, as thunder rolled outside, Lucy realized something:
the forest took her father.
The hospital took her mother.
Only Edma stayed.
As she grew older, the house grew colder.
By age ten, Lucy could predict her parents' arguments before they began. She felt them in the shift of the air, the tightening in her mother's jaw, the resigned slump in her father's shoulders whenever he came home. He tried—he truly tried. He brought small gifts from the forest: a carved wooden bird, a pressed fern, a stone shaped like a heart.
Helena accepted none of them.
"She's too old for such nonsense, Robert," she said one day as Lucy stood in the hallway, unseen. "You leave for weeks, and then you think trinkets can fix everything?"
"They're for Lucy," he replied, tired. "Not you."
The silence that followed was louder than any scream.
At night, Lucy cried into her pillow, hating herself for wishing she were younger—young enough to be held, young enough to be shielded. But childhood doesn't last long in a house where love has sharp edges.
Only Edma noticed her tears.
Only Edma pulled her close, whispering soft words in a language Lucy didn't understand.
When Lucy turned thirteen, the forest began to enter her dreams.
Dark, towering trees.
Shadows that moved when they shouldn't.
A low, distant growl that rattled her bones.
She dreamed of her father standing among those ancient trunks, reaching for her with trembling hands. But something always pulled him back—something she never saw clearly. She would wake gasping, her heart filled with insity
Edma would come sit on her bed until dawn.
"Dreams tell truths our hearts hide," she said softly. "But they also warn us."
"Warn us of what?" Lucy whispered.
Edma didn't answer.
Her silence frightened Lucy more than any nightmare.
By fourteen, Lucy's parents barely spoke at all. Their voices only rose in anger or fell into exhausted sighs. The distance between them had grown into an invisible canyon. Lucy felt herself standing at its edge, desperately trying to build a bridge no one wanted.
One winter night, after her father left for another long assignment, her mother broke a plate in the kitchen. The shattering sound rang through the house. Lucy ran downstairs, heart in her throat.
Helena stood surrounded by shards of porcelain, her breathing uneven, her eyes wild.
"Go to bed," she snapped.
"Mama—"
"I said go!"
Lucy froze. Her mother had never screamed at her like that before. Edma appeared in the doorway, placing herself between them like a shield.
"Enough, Helena," she said firmly. "She's a child."
Helena's lip trembled—just for a moment—before she turned away, her shoulders shaking silently over the sink.
Lucy never forgot that image:
her mother, strong and cold as steel, cracking under the weight of her own storms.
At sixteen, Lucy began to understand that her mother's unhappiness had little to do with her father's job.
Or with Lucy herself.
It was deeper—rooted in something unspoken, something Helena refused to face. She worked double shifts at the hospital, coming home exhausted and irritable. She barely looked at Lucy anymore, as if her daughter were a reflection she didn't want to confront.
Her father, meanwhile, grew more worn with each passing year. The forest was changing, he said. Strange things happening. Villagers whispering about creatures, shadows, eyes watching from the trees.
"You're working too much," Helena told him one night.
"Someone has to," he replied.
Their eyes met—sharp, cold, brittle.
Lucy knew then that love had long left their marriage.
She wondered if it had ever been there at all.
At seventeen, Lucy began helping Edma with the garden behind their house. The small patch of earth was a world of color in an otherwise gray home. Edma taught her how to coax life from the soil, how to speak gently to the plants, how to listen—to the wind, to the ground, to the pulse of the world.
"Everything alive has a voice," Edma said. "You just have to be quiet enough to hear it."
Lucy thought of her parents, both alive yet silent in all the ways that mattered.
"Some voices," she murmured, "are too quiet to save."
Edma looked at her with sorrowful eyes. "Some voices choose not to be heard."
Their gardening afternoons became her sanctuary. Dirt under her nails, the sun on her skin, Edma's stories weaving the air into something warm—these were the memories she clung to.
Not the slammed doors.
Not the half-spoken apologies.
Not the cold dinners eaten in silence.
At eighteen, she found her mother crying quietly in the bathroom.
It was shocking—not because Helena cried, but because she had hidden it so well for so long. The door was half open. Lucy stood frozen, watching her mother's shoulders shake. For the first time, Helena looked fragile, small, human.
Lucy stepped inside. "Mom?"
Helena flinched, wiping her face quickly. "What do you want?"
"I… I heard—"
"You heard nothing." Her voice trembled. "Go to sleep, Lucy."
Lucy wanted to reach for her—wanted to bridge the distance that years of silence had carved. But her mother had already closed her heart, long before this moment.
Lucy walked away.
That night, she cried for both of them.
And then came nineteen.
The year everything broke.
Her parents no longer bothered to hide their resentment. The house trembled with their bitterness. Lucy stopped trying to mend what had never been whole.
One evening, she returned from the market to find her father sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. Helena stood near the doorway, arms crossed, face cold.
They didn't notice Lucy listening.
"I can't do this anymore," Helena said.
"You mean us?" Robert asked.
"I mean this life. This marriage. This… lie."
Silence followed—deep, heavy, suffocating.
Lucy gripped the doorframe, nails digging into the wood.
Her father's voice came out broken. "Helena—"
"It's over, Robert."
Lucy's heart dropped into her stomach.
Her father looked up, eyes tired, defeated. "What about Lucy?"
Helena hesitated. "She's old enough to choose where she stays."
"I won't make her pick sides," he whispered.
"You won't have to," Helena said.
Lucy stepped back before they could see the crack forming inside her chest. She ran upstairs, breath shaking. Edma found her minutes later and held her, rocking her the way she had when Lucy was a child.
"I don't want them to break," Lucy sobbed.
"My sweet girl," Edma whispered, pressing a kiss to her forehead, "they broke long ago. They just finally stopped pretending."
Lucy cried until her throat burned.
The divorce was filed within a week.
Helena packed her belongings with no ceremony, leaving behind empty drawers and a daughter whose heart she never understood. She moved in with Victor Hale—a wealthy businessman—and his twenty-year-old son, Samuel. Samuel's gaze lingered too long, too low. Lucy felt it like grime crawling across her skin.
Her mother invited her to join them.
Lucy refused.
Her father supported her decision, though his visits grew rarer. The forest demanded more of him. Strange incidents. Strange creatures. Strange nights.
He promised he would come back soon.
He promised they would talk.
He promised they would try to rebuild what remained.
Lucy clung to those promises.
Because he was the only parent she had left.
And then he never returned.
The Forest Bureau called at dawn.
Their voices shook.
Their words shattered her world.
An animal attack.
Deep in Evergreen Forest.
Her father, gone.
Edma held her granddaughter as Lucy broke apart in her arms. Helena didn't even come. Victor "sent his regrets."
Lucy cried until she tasted blood.
Something inside her died that day.
Something else awakened.
Because even through her grief, she felt it—
a pull.
A whisper.
A warning.
This wasn't a normal attack.
This wasn't the forest acting alone.
And as Lucy stood at the edge of her childhood, nineteen years old with a heart full of fractures, she realized the truth:
The silence she had feared all her life had come from inside her home—
but the darkness waiting for her now would come from the forest.
And it had been waiting for her
for a very, very long time.
And it had been waiting for her
for a very, very long time.