I dreamed the forest remembered me

I was walking through a stand of old pines, not the ones I know, but older—gnarled and deep in time. The air smelled like wet stone and something else: the faint, sweet decay of forgotten things. A deer stepped out from between the trunks, not to flee, but to look at me. It didn’t blink. Then it turned and walked into the trees, and I realized—I’d been walking toward it all along. When I woke, my hands were still damp, like I’d just pulled them from soil.