She advanced.
Slowly.
Not like one walks. Not like one crosses a space.
She moved with that suspended fluidity that crumples nothing, that doesn't disturb the air, that no longer quite belongs to the world of weight or time. Each step — if there were steps — was a translation, a silent flowing toward me.
And I felt her coming.
Not like a threat.
But like a certainty.
Then, suddenly — without break, without brutality — she veered.
She moved away.
Not out of fear. Not to abandon me.
I felt it immediately, viscerally: she wasn't fleeing.
She was leaving… for something else.
To make me walk.
To make me follow.
To guide.
Not by command, not by pity. Not even out of kindness.
But because now it was up to me to decide.
To follow her.
Or to remain there, frozen in the white, burned by the truth, consumed by what I had just been.
I didn't want to follow her.
