Wordsmiths Fiction Week 3: The Last Photo | Steemit Challenge Season 24

_{My own photo}

Hello everyone!

Today, I'm participating in @senehasa's Steemit challenge, I am trying to let my imagination soar high. To participate: Enter here: Wordsmiths Fiction Week 3: The Last Photo | Steemit Challenge Season 24

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The day Nadeesha decided to venture beyond the beaten paths, into a portion of the woods that even the most seasoned hunters avoided without ever admitting it out loud, no one yet suspected that this young woman, passionate about images and silence, would give birth, in spite of herself, to a story that the ancients themselves would not have dared to whisper, for fear of awakening its dormant roots.

She had left her house long before the sun began to bite the treetops, guided by a strange presentiment, a sort of mute call that seemed to vibrate in the warm morning air, as if the forest itself was inviting her, attracting her, sucking her towards an area forgotten by all maps and erased from all human memories - a place that was only spoken of by avoiding words, for fear of giving it form.

“Today, I am exploring a new path, I heard about a hidden lake, over there, in the green bowels of the massif,” she confided to her brother.

His eyes bright, the camera slung over his shoulder and his innocence still intact, a few minutes before his steps disappeared between the giant ferns and the twisted trunks of century-old fig trees.

When she did not return at dusk, or at nightfall, or even at the next dawn, a dull worry gripped the entire village, as if Nadeesha's absence was awakening in everyone a forgotten fragment of ancestral fear, and soon search parties were formed, torches lit, prayers muttered in the tongue of the elders, while dogs refused to enter certain areas and compasses spun without logic.

But no clue, no print, no scratched bark, nothing allowed us to trace it back to her.

Nothing, except his camera, found two days later at the foot of a dead tree that, according to rumors, grew upside down, its roots towards the sky, its branches planted in the ground and which no one had seen before, although the surroundings were familiar.

The memory card contained a series of sublime shots, capturing the slanting light of a foggy morning, the blurry flight of a deer, a butterfly frozen in mid-wings and, at the very end, an image so strange, so charged with an almost palpable tension, that those who saw it could not suppress a shudder.

There we could see a tiny hut, half buried under moss and roots, literally seeming to grow out of the earth like a living excrescence of the undergrowth, and in front of this hut, standing, almost erased by the white light of the backlight, was an immense, disproportionate figure, draped in a cape or a shadow, of which only the long and disproportionate fingers protruded, seeming to float rather than touch the ground.

No rational explanation could calm the spirits. Experts, cartographers, and solitary hunters were called in. None of them knew this place. So, we went to look for Kamisura, an old man who was said to be crazy and who lived alone, on the banks of the red river, and who, when he saw the photo, turned pale and then declared, in a hoarse voice and without hesitation, that what she had seen was not a being, but a vehicle, a passage, a living limit between the world of forms and that of reflections.

He then said, "If she has entered, she will never truly return."

And yet, a week later, Nadeesha reappeared.

Alone. Barefoot. Mud up to her knees. Silent.

She was taken to the hospital. She refused to speak, eat, or sleep. Then, one morning, she asked, in a calm and almost too slow voice, to see the memory card of her camera. A nurse brought it to her. And before everyone's eyes, she broke it. Not in a fit of rage, but as a ritual gesture, measured, irrevocable.

“What I saw, I cannot say. What I have been, I cannot remain. What I photographed… didn’t want to be seen,” she whispered.

Since then, she has lived on the edge of the village, no longer photographs anything, speaks very rarely, but certain evenings, when the wind shifts and the dogs howl for no reason, we can see, in the depths of her pupils, dancing the pale shape of a cabin that no one dares to look for anymore.

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Thank you very much for reading, it's time to invite my friends @impersonal, @max-pro, @pathanapsana to participate in this contest.

Best Regards,
@kouba01