Nostalgia

When he entered, the picture changed. The wheat was gone. No golden stalks swaying, no endless horizon. The copy he saw of himself just out of view was now nowhere to be seen.

The sky above darkened, shadows pooled like ink, and the scent of sun and earth was swallowed by smoke and sugar.

When the world settled again, Lucius found himself standing at the center of a vast circus. Lanterns hung from impossibly tall poles, tents stretched farther than his eyes could follow, striped in red and gold, their canvas walls shifting. Everywhere, faint echoes of laughter wove through the shadows.

At the heart of it, a table waited, and behind it sat a figure with a veil that shimmered like liquid glass, hands spreading a fan of cards that rippled and twisted. Each card reflected something from Lucius’s life, but none remained still. They shuffled, blurred, then scrambled and reformed into indistinguishable shapes.

Until finally, one card stood still facing the sky above. A mirror.

“Lucius,” the fortune teller whispered. “Welcome. You have stepped beyond memory, beyond time. What you see here is the vastness of your own mind, the corners of your soul.”

“Enough with the riddles,” he shouted. “Where is he? I know I saw him.”

The fortune teller shook her head gently, the lantern light caught in her veil.

“You walk the corridors of your consciousness, Every step brings you closer to yourself. Walk them, and only then will you meet the one who waits for you.”

The carousel spun slightly, stalls with prizes glimmered faintly, a breeze carried the scent of sugary smoke.

“The cards have laid out your future,” the fortune teller said, her voice echoing as the lanterns swayed. “The answers lie not outside, but within the palm of your own hand.”

Looking down into the grooves in his skin, the world began to shift, memories rebuilding around him like forgotten architecture.

The faint smell of glue and chalk dust filled his lungs, as his vision resettled. Tiny desks sat in a neat, perfect grid, their surfaces polished smooth by time. There was no sound on the linoleum, though the faint squeak of sneakers rippled through the air.

He ran his hand along a desk, pausing at the jagged line carved into the surface. His own name.

Lucius stared at it until his throat burned.

Sitting in the chair, knees pressed awkwardly to his chest in the furniture made for smaller bodies, the emptiness of the room pressed down on him.

“I remember sitting here during my first grade parent-teacher interview, reading an encyclopaedia about marine biology. Families of whales and schools of fish, all living together in the deep blue sea. My parents sat right over there, I can almost see their outlines against the chalkboard I used to play hangman on with my friends.”

He traced the edges of the desks with his fingertips until he reached the back wall, where rows of little hooks held coats and half open backpacks.

“I used to steal from here all the time, pretending I was looking through my bag but really was rummaging through everyone else’s. I’d find little gadgets, pencil toppers, shiny toys you’d get when you bought a kids meal. I didn’t need them. I never even used them. I just... took them. For fun, I guess,” he muttered.

Not fun. You just wanted someone to notice.

Lucius flinched at the response, spinning around, but the rows were empty.

Turning away, he pushed into the hallway.

A milk vending machine waited halfway down, its front glowing faintly. He stared at the neat rows of cartons, strawberry, chocolate, regular white, all looking as crisp as they did when he was 6 years old.

“I wanted one so bad. Just to push the button. To watch it drop.”

Because that’s what the cool kids did. And you wanted to feel like one of them.

“I was a kid,” Lucius said. “It wasn’t wrong to want that.”

But you never got it, did you? Always standing there, staring, wishing. Always on the outside.

His throat tightened. He turned away, taking the stairs down into the play yard.

Hot asphalt, damp grass, the faint tang of rust from the tall fences placed around the wide concrete platforms with the swathed trees.

“There was that one girl. She stomped my sweater in a puddle here. Ruined it. I don’t know what her issue was, we were always fighting.”

And you let her. You did nothing.

“Then over here, the soccer ball, and that second grader with the popsicle. I knocked it clean out of his hands. He looked at me like he was gonna kill me.”

And you believed him. You thought everyone was bigger than you, stronger than you. You were scared of a kid with a little treat.

Lucius clenched his fists, staring at the patch of concrete where he once tackled another boy to the ground. The echo of it rang in his knees.

“I fought back here. I didn’t always freeze. I was brought down to the principal’s office after, but they let me off with a warning.”

No. You went too far. You liked the hit, the crash, the way they looked at you as they fell.

“That’s not true.”

It is. You wanted to matter. And hurting them, at least that made you feel better.

Lucius stopped. His chest rose and fell fast, breath quickening.

“I was just trying not to disappear,” he whispered.

And yet... you still did.

The school grounds faded, and a park took over in its place.

Wide green sweeps of grass, a playground of metal and laughter, a pool that flashed like a sheet of cut glass. The air tasted of cut grass and sunscreen, bright and sharp as a summer day.

Lucius walked slowly, sinking into the warm grass. He let the weight of it settle in his chest, an ache that was almost sweet.

“I used to live for this,” he said. “All year long I would wait. This was... everything.”

The morning of a trip waiting for the bus, the dodgeball matches in the school gym, the names shouted across fields that meant something, the small constellation of faces that he saw everyday.

He paused beneath a stand of trees, the shade cool against his forehead. A laugh echoed there, high and bright, as if the sound had been left in the leaves.

“I remember playing this stupid game here called paranoia. A circle of us would sit around, just hanging out, just being together.”

You were alive here. You belonged.

Lucius let out a hollow sound that might have been a laugh. “For half a summer every year, I mattered.”

You smiled. You were loud. You weren’t the shadow then.

He wandered to the pool, its tiles cool under the summer glare. The deep end loomed, blue and secret. The green paper band granted for a passing deep end test flashed in his mind, the achievement of something that felt significant to a child.

“I remember how excited I was when I passed for the first time.”

You wanted to be brave. You wanted the paper to prove you weren’t scared.

From the pool he drifted toward the courts. The sun there struck different, the kind of heat that makes skin sticky and conversations easy. He could see them all. The kids sprawled on the asphalt after games, hats pulled down to keep the sun out of their eyes. Counselors leaning on the chain link fence, drinking out of coloured water bottles. A circle of voices trading jokes that landed like soft stones.

“I thought... this was enough.”

You were enough. You weren’t invisible.

But the memory soured like fruit left too long in the sun, the taste turning bitter on his tongue.

“All of it was taken away. Everything I cared about, pulled away piece by piece.

You lost it. Your disruptive behaviours never allowed you to be happy for too long.

“I didn’t do anything on purpose.”

No one ever does. But the more you pull, the farther away things seem to move. But when you push, at least then you feel you got what you deserved.

Lucius sank to the grass, palms flat on the warm blades, and pressed his forehead to his knees.

“I just wanted to feel like I wasn’t nothing,” he whispered into the grass, admitting it to the earth.

You forgot what that meant.

The grass melted away into tall, shadowed stacks of books. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, half of them flickering like a dying heartbeat.

His hand landed on a spine he knew by heart. He pulled it free, pulse quickening. But when he flipped it open, the pages were blank. White. Lifeless.

“No...” Lucius whispered, his voice breaking. He flipped faster, frantic. “No. It was here. This is where I found all my favourite characters. Where I learned that there was something better out there. Don’t take this too!”

Nothing is ever really taken. Only buried. Only forgotten.

The sound of pages flapping filled the air like wings, then fell silent. He slammed the book shut and shoved it back onto the shelf.

“Even here,” Lucius growled, low and bitter, “you take everything from me. Even this.”

Maybe you gave it away yourself.

Lucius stalked down the aisle, fists clenched. The stacks opened into a sunken crescent shaped area, with cushioned benches that ran under the curved windows painted with bright cartoon characters. He paused, staring at the ghosts of paper and pencil sketches spread across the carpeted floor.

“I used to sit here for hours trying to draw, making up all these stories in my head.”

And did it work? Did you create a better world?

“No,” Lucius snapped, though his eyes softened. “But I tried.”

He turned away quickly, pacing to the front. The checkout desk loomed, polished and smooth. He could almost see his mother standing there, patient, while he piled stack after stack of books onto the counter.

“She let me take out a hundred at a time,” he said, almost smiling. “And I read them all. Every single one.”

You had so much life in you. Where did it all go?

The library dissolved, traded in for snowflakes that hung in the air like frozen motes of light, drifting lazily down into the warm glow of a familiar living room. The scent of pine and waxed wood filled his senses, sharp and alive. Outside, he could hear the distant echo of carolers and the faint hum of a city resting under the winter night.

A Christmas tree stood in the corner, decked with lights and glass ornaments that glistened like captured stars. Lucius stepped closer, his shoes crunching softly against the carpet dusted in sparkling snowlight.

He ran his hands over the gifts stacked neatly beneath the tree, already knowing what was placed inside each one.

“This one here is the gaming console I wanted forever. And this one, my favourite book series, the whole set in this ribboned box. All of these, the building blocks, the construction sets, the superhero action figures. I remember them all.”

Your parents were so good to you. And what did you do for them? What gift did they receive in return?

“I…” Lucius muttered, unable to finish his sentence.

Yes, that’s right.

“Enough,” he said aloud, voice shaking but firm. “I’ve seen enough. I’ve remembered. Now I want to see you. Face to face. No more illusions.”

The living room shifted. The carpet rippled like water. The tree shimmered, ornaments spinning slowly, their reflections scattering across the ceiling. The walls creaked and stretched, all of it fading away.

When it was gone, he found himself standing in the wheatfields again. The air was thick with the scent of the open fields, the sun low on the horizon, golden and fierce. The fields stretched endlessly, wind rustling the stalks, carrying with it the weight of memory, pain, and a fragile hope.

Lucius stepped forward, eyes narrowing.

“I’m ready,” he said, voice firm. “I’m ready to see you.”