The next night the City was empty.
Not unusually empty.
Completely.
There were no footsteps.
No wind.
Even the stones seemed silent.
Lina walked the familiar streets.
She passed the Market.
It was empty.
She passed the Hall of Mirrors.
The doors were shut.
The Comfort Merchant’s house was gone.
Only empty space remained.
As if it had never existed.
At the edge of the city she saw a gate.
It was plain.
Wooden.
No inscriptions.
No guards.
An orchard grew beyond it.
Not like the Orchard of Praise.
There was no fruit here.
No paths.
Only tall grass.
A few old trees.
And silence.
Lina walked in.
Waited.
Expected someone to appear.
The Bone Collector.
The She-Wolf.
Some demon.
At least a voice.
Nothing.
A few minutes passed.
Nothing.
She walked deeper in.
The orchard was large.
But strangely empty.
There were no birds.
No insects.
Even the leaves didn’t move.
She had never experienced such silence.
– Is anyone here?
She called out.
Her voice sounded strange.
As if it belonged to someone else.
No echo returned.
She walked on.
An hour passed.
Maybe a day.
In the City, time never flowed the way it normally did.
She no longer understood it.
She only felt it.
Discomfort began to set in.
First came the urge to talk.
To anyone.
Then she remembered her phone.
It wasn’t there.
She remembered a book.
That wasn’t there either.
She wanted to write down a thought.
She had no notebook.
Only herself remained.
She sat down beneath a large tree.
Tried to meditate.
It didn’t work.
Thoughts kept racing.
She needed to answer emails.
Finish an article.
Call her mother.
Not forget to buy tea.
Why did I say that sentence?
Was the patient offended?
Should I have…
She suddenly laughed.
The thoughts were louder than any noise.
More time passed.
The thoughts began to slow.
One after another.
As if growing tired.
For the first time since entering the orchard, Lina looked up.
She noticed a tree.
Its bark bore a deep wound left by lightning.
But the tree was alive.
Still growing.
Still putting out new branches.
She touched the trunk.
Warm.
She walked on.
Noticed ants.
Further on – moss.
Water flowing between stones.
She didn’t know how much time had passed.
She only suddenly realized she hadn’t been thinking about anything for a long while.
She was simply being.
A single apple tree grew in the middle of the orchard.
A wooden bench stood beneath it.
Lina sat down.
And for the first time felt no need to understand anything.
There were no answers.
There were no questions.
There wasn’t even the urge to search.
There was only a strange sense of wholeness.
Then she heard footsteps.
She turned around.
No one was walking.
Again.
Footsteps.
This time she understood.
It was the echo of her own footsteps.
For the first time in the City, she heard herself.
Not thoughts.
Not fears.
Not memories.
Herself.
She closed her eyes.
And suddenly understood something she hadn’t noticed until now.
In every previous encounter, she had always been learning something.
Someone was showing her something.
Explaining.
Warning her.
Even the demons had spoken.
This place did nothing.
It offered nothing.
Took nothing away.
It only left her alone.
And that was entirely enough.
When she opened her eyes, a tiny acorn lay on the bench in front of her.
No one had brought it.
It simply was.
Lina took it into her palm.
Small.
Almost meaningless.
And yet…
An entire oak tree was already inside it.
Only not yet visible.
She understood.
Some things only grow when nothing disturbs them.
In the distance, a bird’s song sounded for the first time.
Then a second.
A breeze rose in the orchard.
The leaves stirred.
The silence didn’t vanish.
It simply came alive.
Lina stood up.
At the gate she turned around once more.
The orchard looked the same.
Plain.
Without miracles.
But now she knew.
It had been the hardest place in the entire City.
Because here there was nothing to lean on.
Only herself.
She woke at dawn.
She didn’t hurry to get up.
The room was quiet.
Before, such silence would have weighed on her.
Now it felt like space.
She opened the black notebook.
And wrote:
A person isn’t afraid of solitude.
A moment later she added:
They’re afraid of being left without everything they filled themselves with.
She stared at the page for a long time.
Then wrote the final line.
Solitude isn’t a place where a person loses the world. It’s the place where they meet themselves for the first time.