What Might Have Been
The studio is silent. No music emanates from the emptiness today. No shift in shadows. No smell of ink or turpentine.
Just me. The dogs. The empty picture frame.
I sweep the floor, though there’s no need. I pack away the last tools. Close the drawers. I light the stove, then let it go out. The dogs watch from their usual spots, but they know. They rise, stretch, and move to the door. I open it.
They hesitate, then, run into the forest.
I leave the door open behind them.
The frame waits on the back wall. Empty. A standing void where the light doesn't quite land. I face it and take the key provided by the Emissary from my pocket. It pulsates.
And then she’s there.
Radiant. Seductive. More beautiful than I remember. Holding a fan of energy. Her hair haloed. Her eyes pull at me. A flicker of knowing, of longing. She remains silent.
I lift the key, hold it in my palm, offer it forward.
She smiles.
I throw it.
It arcs through the frame and drops from sight.
Her smile shatters.
“No,” she says, voice sharp. “You have to carry it with you.”
I freeze. “Throw it back to me then.”
“I can’t.” Her voice cracks. “Only the Emissary could do that.”
“Then find him. Ask him...”
She shakes her head. “He no longer exists.”
Silence. A long moment where we stare at each other, both realizing the consequences.
“We’ll never be…” she begins.
Her world dims. Not all at once. The sound goes first. I see her mouth move but hear nothing. Her hand presses against what is now a clear glass barrier. I press from my side. She mouths words I cannot hear.
I read her lips: “I love you.”
I try to reach through the glass. Something pulls her back like a slow, gentle tide reclaiming its own.
She recedes into the distance.
Light drains away.
Her world becomes a mirror in the frame.
All I see is me.
I wait there, hoping she’ll return.
The dogs come home. They circle the empty studio, sniff, then settle beside me.
Wind rattles the loose window pane above the stove.
The door blows shut.

Prologue
I left the studio not long after that. Too many ghosts. I found a small town in the Pacific Northwest, near the edge of a forest. I set up another studio where I print, paint, write and try to make good art. No one here knows who I am.
There’s a trail behind the house that leads to a small forest where the trees sometimes whisper to me.
I am old now. The dogs are gone. Time has worn me down. I eat. I sleep. I keep the studio warm. And sometimes, late at night, when I’m walking in the woods alone, I remember the moment the key left my hand. And I wonder what might have been, if I’d just held on and carried it with me.