Success does not announce itself.
It leaks.
It seeps into places you did not invite it, settles into cracks you did not know were there, and by the time you notice it, it has already changed the shape of the room.
The first sign is the forest.
Not the trees themselves, but the way the wolves move through them.
They linger now. Runners pause at the edges of paths instead of cutting straight through. Eyes catch light between trunks where there should only be shadow. I feel attention brush my back when I am not looking at anything in particular.
The thin place has not changed.
That is what matters.
But everything around it has.
Adam notices it before I say anything.
“We’re being watched,” he says one morning, voice low as he pours coffee into a chipped mug. “More than usual.”
I tak
