Gemotions

The weight of the time capsule, heavy with the buried past, felt like a physical burden on his shoulders. He didn't recognize the location, the small clearing deep within the city park, yet an instinctive tremor ran through him. He knelt, his legs shaky beneath him. A sense of wrongness, a fundamental displacement, filled him.

Inside, nestled amongst faded photographs and a collection of childhood trinkets, was a single, dried flower. He recognized the type, a star-shaped bloom that only grew in his grandmother's garden, now long since gone. He closed his eyes, his breath hitching.

He felt an overwhelming need to be somewhere else, anywhere else. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. He didn't know who had put this here, but whoever it was, he felt a kinship and a deep, unsettling sense of unease. He pushed the box's lid shut, stood and walked away at a hurried pace.