I walked back to my car. The gravel path seemed longer than before. The forest seemed quieter. And for the rest of the day, I kept glancing at my reflection in windows, checking to see if the sky behind my eyes had changed.
The brochure didn't mention any of that. 2poles 1hole
I stared at the left pole first. It was smooth, cool-looking, with a single hairline scratch running up its side like a vein. The right pole was identical, except for a faint smear of rust near its base. I looked at the hole. Nothing. Dirt, maybe roots. The air smelled of wet moss and my own boredom. I walked back to my car
I reached out. My fingers passed through the surface without resistance, and I felt something I can't name: not cold, not warm, but present , like a hand that had been waiting to hold mine. I pulled back fast. My fingertips were clean, but they smelled of rain on asphalt, of the inside of a seashell, of my grandmother's kitchen before she died. And for the rest of the day, I
I blinked. The reflection held.
Then I shifted my weight, and the light changed. A cloud moved. The sun slid through the trees at a different angle, and suddenly the two poles cast shadows that touched across the hole. The shadows didn't just meet—they interlocked , like fingers lacing. And the hole, which had been empty, now held a reflection of the sky. Not the sky above, but a different sky: bruised purple, with a moon I didn't recognize.
The poles were exactly as promised: two of them, gray and brushed metal, standing waist-high in a clearing of ferns. Between them, a hole. Not a pit or a crater—just a hole, dark as a pupil, about the size of a dinner plate. A small wooden sign said LOOK LONGER .