Gemotions

Rain lashed against the car window, mirroring the storm brewing inside Amelia. She hadn't visited her childhood home in years, not since her parents sold it. Now, drawn by a vague sense of… emptiness, she’d made the pilgrimage. The house looked different, smaller somehow, even though she knew that was impossible.

She parked the car and stepped out, the chill air biting at her cheeks. She walked towards the back garden, the same garden where, at the age of eight, she’d planted a sapling. A little oak, tiny as a twig then, a promise of something lasting.

Her breath hitched. Where the oak had stood, there was now only a stark, empty space, a rough patch of churned earth. A wave of nausea rolled over her. She touched the cold, wet soil, the absence of the familiar trunk a gaping wound in the landscape of her memories.