Chapter Four — Shared Silence, Shared Dreams

Eli didn’t paint for two days.

Noah noticed. Not because he was counting — at least not out loud — but because the porch of the cabin stayed the same. No new canvases. No dripping brushes. Just quiet.

On the third day, he finally worked up the nerve to go back.

When he arrived, Eli was sitting on the porch steps, sketchbook resting on his knees, blank page untouched.

“You stopped painting,” Noah said.

Eli glanced up, eyes distant. “The forest went quiet.”

Noah frowned. “I didn’t think it could.”

“It doesn’t stay silent for long,” Eli murmured. “It’s just... listening.”

“To what?”

Eli looked at him. And for the first time, his voice softened.

“You.”

They didn’t speak much after that. But Noah didn’t leave either.

He sat beside Eli on the porch, legs pulled up to his chest, listening to the wind move through the trees like breath. It wasn’t awkward. Just… still.

Eli eventually handed him a pencil and a spare page.

“You draw?”

“Nope.”

“Try anyway.”

So Noah did. Badly. And Eli didn’t laugh.

That evening, as the sky darkened to navy and the wind thickened with pine and mystery, Eli looked at him and asked:

“Do you want to try something?”

🌘 That Night

“No music,” Eli said as they stood at the forest’s edge.

Noah nodded.

“No lights.”

“Right.”

“No fear.”

Noah hesitated. “You can’t really ask that.”

Eli turned to him, serious. “I’m not asking. I’m telling.”

Noah swallowed his nerves.

They stepped into the woods — together.

The dream didn’t start with trees.

It started in a room made of stars.

Noah stood alone, barefoot on a floor that shimmered like water. Above him: endless constellations swirling like paint on canvas.

Then — a flicker.

Eli appeared. Not ghostly, not distant. Real. Solid. He walked slowly toward Noah, barefoot, glowing faintly.

“You’re dreaming this too?” Noah asked, unsure if he was speaking aloud or just thinking.

Eli’s voice echoed inside his chest.

“No. We are dreaming.”

Their fingers brushed.

Noah’s heart thudded like thunder in water. “Why are we here?”

“You’re asking the wrong question.”

“…Then what’s the right one?”

Eli looked straight into him — not just at him, into him. His pain. His guilt. His fear.

“What are you hiding from?”

The stars around them shifted — and suddenly, the dream morphed.

Noah was standing in his old bedroom. The one from the city. The one with the door that never fully closed and the smell of his brother’s cologne still hanging in the air.

He turned — and saw his brother.

Smiling.

Gone.

Noah’s chest cracked open. “No—”

But a hand reached for his. Eli.

“You don’t have to stay here,” he whispered.

Then the dream changed again.

Now they were in Eli’s memory.

A young boy stood in the forest, crying. Alone. Calling a name into the trees.

“No one came for me,” Eli said softly. “Except the pines.”

Noah turned. Eli was beside him again, breathing hard, like the memory still lived under his skin.

He reached out. Took Eli’s hand.