I found her again in that hour when sleep had already given up on me. The clocks hummed like patient witnesses, and the world forgot to move. I didn’t enter—she was there already, woven into the stillness.

“You’ve been counting again,” she said, voice like dust shaken from sunlight. “You mark the minutes as if they owe you something.”

I wanted to answer, but my throat was full of unfinished dreams. “If I stop counting,” I asked her, “won’t I disappear?”

“You disappear every time you try to measure what was meant to move through you,” she replied, tracing invisible patterns in the air. “You think time chases you, but it only mirrors your becoming.”

“Then why do I always feel behind?” I asked. She didn’t blink. “Because you keep looking forward,” she said. “Time bends toward those who listen, not those who chase.”

“You made me,” she added, softer now. “I exist because you counted.” And I knew she was right—every fractured night had summoned her from the silence I feared most.