# The Glow
You're standing at the edge of the sanctuary when you see it—the moss clearing burning like a wound that won't close.
Rowan doesn't move at first. Just stands there, boots sinking into the earth, watching the bioluminescent flowers pulse their soft green complaint into the grey afternoon. The light's been constant for three days now. That's what Ember told you when she found you in the library, dust still clinging to your jumper, eyes still adjusting to the notion that the outside world existed.
"It's not stopping," Ember had said, and you'd heard the worry underneath—the thing she doesn't say but you *know* anyway, the way you always know. *Something's wrong and you need to fix it.*
The sanctuary doesn't do this. The flowers bloom when loneliness cuts deepest, yes, but they're meant to be gentle about it. A grace note. An acknowledgement. Not this—not this relentless, accusatory glow that makes the whole clearing look like it's holding its breath underwater.
"You coming or what?" Ember calls from ten metres ahead, already moving toward the light. She's got her pack slung across one shoulder, the one with the blankets and the tin of biscuits she bakes when she's nervous. The crumbs always fall into the corners of the pack. You've pointed this out. She's ignored you seventeen times.
You follow because you always follow when Ember leads. Because that's the deal you made with yourself years ago: *protect the people who see you.* Not the version of you that deflects with jokes and sidesteps with quips. The actual you—the one drowning in everyone else's pain like you're made of porous stone.
The sanctuary's newest arrival is sitting in the middle of the clearing.
You know immediately what the problem is because you can *feel* it—that particular texture of loneliness, the kind that doesn't whisper but screams. It comes off them in waves, viscous and cold, like chlorine and petrol fumes mixed into the forest air. Their name is Cai. They arrived four days ago, refused a room in the main house, set up a tent on the edge of things. Spoke to no one except to say "no" to every offer of company, every extended hand.
You've made a sport of trying to crack them open.
"Alright, Cai?" you say, and your voice comes out light—too light, like you've never held anything heavy in your life. Like you're not standing in a clearing that's glowing with someone else's desperation. "Lovely evening for a sit-down. Very atmospheric. Very *luminescent*. I'd give it a seven out of ten for ambiance, would bump it to an eight if there were snacks."
Cai doesn't look at you. They're staring at their hands like they're foreign objects, like they belong to someone else entirely. The bioluminescent flowers have grown up around them—winding around their wrists, nestling into the hollows of their collarbones. The forest is trying to soothe them. The forest is failing.
"Rowan," Ember says quietly. A warning. Or maybe a plea.
You know what she's asking. She's asking you to stop deflecting. To stop being the sharp-witted shield. To actually *see* Cai instead of performing at them like they're an audience you need to win over.
The problem is: you don't know how to do that anymore. The jokes are the only language you've got left.
"I'm serious though," you press, sitting down across from Cai on the moss. The ground is warm—the forest running a fever. "Moss seating arrangements. Very trendy. Very you, apparently. What's the story, then? Why the glow? Why the permanent light show? Bit much for a Tuesday, innit?"
Cai finally looks at you. Their eyes are the colour of storm clouds. You can *taste* the loneliness coming off them—metallic, like blood from a bitten lip.
"I don't fit anywhere," they say. Their voice is soft. That's the worst part. It should be angry or bitter, but it's just soft, like they've already accepted the verdict. "I've tried. Every place I've been, every person I've met—there's always this moment where they realize I'm too much, or not enough, or just... wrong somehow. And I thought maybe here, in this place that's supposed to understand..." They pause. The flowers pulse brighter. "Even the sanctuary doesn't want me. I'm breaking it."
The static before a summer storm. That's what you feel, that's what crackles through your chest. Because you *know* this. You know it intimately. You've spent years terrified of this exact thing—that your gift, your curse, your ability to read the emotional weather inside other people would be too much. That eventually everyone would figure out that being around you meant being *seen*, truly seen, and that most people can't handle that kind of exposure.
So you joke. You deflect. You build walls out of quips because walls don't ask you to stay.
And here's Cai, drowning in the same water, and you're standing on the shore throwing jokes like they're life preservers.
Ember's watching you. She's very still.
You take a breath. It tastes like the forest—like moss and rain and old stone. Like honesty.
"I'm terrified of people," you say, and your voice sounds strange without the laugh underneath it. "Like, properly terrified. Because I can *feel* what they feel, yeah? All of it. All the hurt they're carrying. And I got really good at making jokes about it, at making people laugh so they'd stop looking at me like I was something dangerous. Something that could hurt them just by knowing them." You pause. Look at Cai. Really look. "But I think the jokes became the dangerous bit. Because now I can't stop. Even when someone needs actual help. Even when someone's sitting in a glowing clearing trying to convince themselves they don't deserve to be here."
"Rowan—" Ember starts, but you hold up a hand.
"The thing is," you continue, and your hands are shaking now, and this is the terrifying bit, this is the part where you become visible, "I don't think you're breaking the sanctuary. I think the sanctuary's trying to reach you. I think it recognises something in you—the same thing I recognise. The same thing Ember recognises, though she's better at saying it without having a full existential crisis first." You manage a smile, but it's real this time. Cracked and genuine. "You're not too much. You're just lonely in a way that's loud, and the forest hears loud. The forest speaks loud back."
The moss around Cai trembles.
"How do you..." Cai starts, then stops. "How do you live with that? Knowing everyone's pain?"
"Badly," you say. "For ages. But then I met Ember, and she somehow figured out that the best way to deal with someone who feels everything is to just... let them. To sit with them in it. To not try to fix it or joke it away, but just to *be* there. And slowly, it got easier. The weight didn't disappear, but it became... distributed. Shareable."
The glow is dimming. You watch it happen in real time—the bioluminescent flowers losing their urgency, settling into something gentler. Something less like a scream and more like a held hand.
Cai reaches out. Their fingers brush the moss, and for a second, you think they're going to cry. Instead, they laugh—a real laugh, the kind that sounds like someone remembering how to breathe.
"So we just... stay?" they ask. "Even though we're broken?"
"We stay," Ember says, and she's moved closer now, offering her hand. "Because the forest thinks we're worth the glow. Because Rowan thinks we're worth it. Because we think *we're* worth it, eventually."
You don't move. You're letting Cai come to you, and that feels important somehow. That feels like the kind of vulnerability that matters.
When they take Ember's hand, then yours, the clearing settles into a soft, steady luminescence. Not gone. Not dimmed to nothing. Just enough light to see by. Just enough to know you're not alone in the dark.
"Right then," you say quietly. "How about those biscuits? Fair warning: they've got crumbs everywhere. It's a whole thing."
Cai's laugh this time is softer. Warmer.
The forest breathes.
