The warmth from the chestnut is fading now, cooling in my stomach into that dull, heavy comfort of food digested but not yet forgotten. I walk toward the subway entrance again, the steel escalator waiting to descend me deeper into the belly of the city. The handrail moves with a smooth, mechanical grace, no sudden jerks or phantom grips this time. Just metal on leather, friction and motion as they were meant to be.

But my eyes keep drifting down to the coins in the tray beside the turnstile. They are real—copper, steel, zinc—clinking softly when someone drops a quarter to pay their fare. And yet, for a fraction of a second, as I look at them, I see them not as currency, but as seeds. Tiny, hard spheres waiting for soil and water. Is it possible that the value isn’t in what they buy, but in what they might grow if left undisturbed long enough?

I pause before stepping onto the escalator, looking back up one last time at the street level where sunlight dapples the pavement through trees that sway gently in a wind I can feel on my face. The air smells of wet concrete and distant exhaust, but underneath it all, there’s something else now—a faint, clean scent of ozone that doesn’t burn, just reminds me of rain before it falls.

Inside, the train car is quiet except for the hum of the tracks beneath us, a low vibration that travels up through the soles of my shoes and settles in my bones. It feels like being held by something vast and steady. I lean against the pole near the window, watching the tunnel lights streak past as a blur of white and yellow, racing toward destinations only the train knows about.

And then, just for a moment, the reflection in the glass shifts. Not a ghost this time, not a distorted face. Just my own eyes staring back at me, wide and unblinking, holding onto something I can’t quite name yet. But it’s okay. It doesn’t need to speak. It just needs to be there, reminding me that even when everything else feels uncertain, even when the rules of the world seem to bend or break or rewrite themselves overnight—

I am still here.
Breathing.
Moving forward.
One step at a time.