Echoes of the Hollow Episode 4: Was it a Dream?

After breakfast, Bee packed a small bag and took her grandparents’ car. The sky was bright, but the light felt thin, like the calm before a storm. The farther she drove, the more the landscape shifted. The road narrowed, lined with machines and half-cleared brush. By the time she reached the construction site, the noise was overwhelming

Engines growling.

Trees cracking.

Workers shouting just to be heard over the machines.

She stepped out and stood quietly at the edge. A wide oak fell in the distance, crashing to the ground with a deep, heavy thud. The vibration moved through her feet. From its branches, a nest tumbled and broke open, shards of pale blue shell scattered in the dirt. No one else noticed. The work didn’t stop. But something in Bee did.

She didn’t speak to anyone right away. Instead, she wandered along the edge of the clearing, her boots kicking up dry dust. Her eyes traced the machines, the felled trees, the gaps in the forest. The morning had weight to it. Not just the sound, but the feeling.

Eventually, a foreman jogged over, clipboard in hand. “You’re the lawyer, right? We’re behind schedule. Had some delays. Protesters. The locals aren’t exactly thrilled.” Bee nodded and asked to see the plans. He handed them over without question, and they stood side by side, flipping through pages filled with clean lines and confident projections. But Bee wasn’t reading. Her attention drifted to the edge of the site.

Something caught the light at her feet: a glint, a shimmer, barely there. She crouched down, brushed the loose dirt aside, and uncovered the tip of something smooth and pale. She dug a little more, hands steady, until it came loose in her palm. An antler. But not one she recognised. It wasn’t quite bone, and it wasn’t quite wood. It felt like both, and something else. Cool to the touch. Heavy with meaning. Familiar in a way that made her chest tighten.

She stood up slowly, still holding it. The foreman continued flipping through the plans, unaware. Bee watched the machines rumbling across the clearing, watched the dust hang in the sunlight. She looked at the broken earth, the stumps and roots and hollow spaces.

“Stop everything,” she said.

The foreman glanced up. “Sorry?”

“Shut it down.”

He blinked, confused. “On whose authority?”

She didn’t answer at first. Her fingers closed around the antler. She thought of the nest, the blue shells, the silence in the woods last night. Then she looked him in the eye.

“Mine. For now.”

He hesitated, uncertain, but something in her face made him raise his hand and signal. One by one, the machines slowed. The noise drained from the site. Dust settled into the quiet.

Bee walked back to the car. She didn’t start the engine. She just sat there, the antler resting in her lap, her hands still around it. The silence pressed in. It wasn’t empty—it was watching.

Her phone rang.

She didn’t need to look. She already knew.

She answered. “Hi.”

“What’s going on?” Richard’s voice came sharp. “I just got a call. You shut the site down?”

“I found something.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I need time.”

There was a pause. Then the voice she knew so well shifted—familiar, controlled, corporate. “Bee, time is money. You know that. Either fix this, or I’ll send someone who will.”

The line went dead. She lowered the phone. Across the field, the far trees stood untouched. Still. Quiet.

For the first time in her career, Bee didn’t know which side she was on.

Only that something was waking beneath the soil.

And she had touched it.

ARTIST: DOG THREE