Sabella had always known which places were listening.17Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHWkAkT6AUh
Some spots hummed if you stood still long enough. Others pressed back, like the air had weight. Most people walked through those places without ever noticing, their thoughts louder than the world around them.
But Sabella Oakwind had been taught to notice.
She was seventeen the first time she felt the oak.
It stood in the center of the park in Dayton, older than the paved paths, older than the iron benches, older than the gazebo where summer bands played off-key country songs. Its trunk was wide enough that three kids holding hands couldn’t wrap all the way around it. The bark was deeply furrowed, ridged like the lines on a palm.
Her grandmother had brought her there at dusk, when the sky was the soft gray-blue of fading denim.
“Stand still,” Nana had said, pressing a warm, work-worn hand between Sabella’s shoulder blades. “Don’t reach. Let it come to you.”
Sabella remembered feeling silly at first. Then restless. Then—
There.
A low, steady current under her skin. Not electricity. Not wind. Something older. Slower. Like a deep underground river moving through stone.
Her breath had caught.
“Good,” Nana murmured. “That’s a crossing point. Energy moves through here. The tree keeps it calm. Rooted things are good at that.”
“Like a guard?” Sabella had asked.
“Like a shepherd,” Nana corrected. “Guiding the flow so it doesn’t wander where it shouldn’t.”
Sabella never forgot that feeling. After Nana passed, she came back to the oak alone sometimes, sitting with her back against the bark, letting that quiet current steady her racing thoughts. It made the world feel larger, but also more balanced. As if unseen things were being handled.
So when the notice went up on the park bulletin board, she felt it like a bruise pressed too hard.
TREE REMOVAL – HAZARD MITIGATION17Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdf28zf0fbu
Interior decay detected. Scheduled for removal next Thursday.
She stood there a long time, rereading the words. Hazard. Decay. Removal.
Practical words. Reasonable words.
Still, something inside her whispered, You don’t cut down a shepherd and expect the flock to behave.
She went to the town meeting that week. Sat in the back row of folding chairs, hands knotted in her sleeves.
“The arborist confirmed internal rot,” someone said. “It could come down in a windstorm. We can’t risk it near the playground.”
Heads nodded. Pens scratched notes. Budgets were mentioned. Liability.
Sabella opened her mouth once.
Then closed it.
What was she supposed to say? You can’t cut it down, it’s stabilizing an intersection of spiritual energy lines?
She could already hear the polite silence. The careful smiles.
So she said nothing. And hated herself a little for it.
They took the oak down on a bright morning that smelled like cut grass and chainsaw oil.
Sabella didn’t go to watch.
She felt it anyway.
She was in her tiny apartment above the herbal shop where she worked, sorting dried chamomile into jars, when a sudden hollowness opened in her chest. Not pain. Not exactly. More like the sensation of missing a stair you thought was there.
Her hands froze mid-motion.
The hum she’d always felt at the edge of her awareness—the slow, steady current beneath Dayton—flickered.
Then shifted.
It didn’t stop. That was the worst part. It kept flowing, but without the oak’s grounding presence, it felt… loose. Sloppier. Like water spilling wider across a flat surface instead of running between firm banks.
A glass jar rattled on the shelf beside her.
Sabella set the chamomile down very carefully.
“Okay,” she whispered to the empty room. “Okay. I feel you.”
She closed her eyes and reached—not pulling, just sensing.
The energy at the park had thinned and spread. Not dangerous. Not yet. Just unguarded.
Exposed.
She grabbed her jacket and walked the six blocks to the park, each step tightening something behind her ribs.
Where the oak had stood, there was only a wide stump now, pale raw wood ringed with sawdust. The air above it shimmered faintly in the midday sun, like heat rising from asphalt.
No one else seemed to notice.
A mother pushed a stroller past, talking on her phone. Two middle school boys biked along the path, arguing about a video game. Life moved on, unaware that something quiet and ancient had just been removed.
Sabella stepped off the path and approached the stump.
Up close, the feeling was stronger. The current beneath the ground surged upward here, unfiltered. Not violent—just bright and uncontained, like a lamp with no shade.
She crouched and pressed her palm to the exposed rings.
They were warm.
Not from the sun. From movement. From energy that had nowhere to go but out.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, not sure if she meant the tree, the land, or the town.
A breeze stirred, though the rest of the park remained still. It brushed her hair across her cheek and carried with it a faint metallic tang, like the air before a thunderstorm.
Without the oak, the crossing stood open.
Not a door flung wide. More like a gate left unlatched.
Most of the time, that wouldn’t matter. The unseen world didn’t constantly press in. Crossings existed everywhere, thin places where energies met and parted without incident.
But unguarded places attracted attention.
Curious things. Hungry things. Lost things.
Sabella stayed there a long while, one hand on the stump, breathing with the slow pulse beneath it. Trying to memorize the new shape of the flow. Trying to believe it would settle on its own.
Eventually, the chill in her knees drove her to stand.
As she walked back toward the sidewalk, she glanced over her shoulder.
In the bright afternoon light, the stump looked harmless. Almost decorative. Just another remnant of something old making way for something new.
But Sabella knew better.
Some losses didn’t bleed right away.
Some just left the world a little more open than it should be.
And open places never stayed empty for long.17Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAg64qVaJzR
and then Add to home screen.