The Crossing (Chapter)

Ezra hadn’t been to the lot in years.

He stood at the edge of it now, hands in his jacket pockets, watching the wind move through a rusted length of chain-link fence. The gate hung crooked, open wide enough to let anything through. The pavement beyond it was broken and faded, split by stubborn weeds that pressed through like old roots remembering how to rise.

This was where the house had stood.

Not just any house—his house. The same one he’d lived in since he was two. But back then, it had been whole. L-shaped, built clean on this patch of dirt before someone split it and moved it across town. Reassembled it like nothing had happened.

But something had.

Ezra stepped through the gate and into the lot. His boots scraped over gravel, dry leaves, flecks of glass. The sun hung low behind him, casting the fence’s long shadow forward like a path. Somewhere beneath the scent of exhaust and dry asphalt, he thought he caught a hint of citrus—faint and distant, like a memory that didn’t belong to him but somehow lived in his chest.

He’d heard there used to be an orange grove here. Long before the house. Before the pavement. Maybe it was true. Maybe the ground remembered.

He walked to the center of the lot and stopped.

The air shifted. Not temperature—tone. The light dimmed, not from clouds, but from something deeper. Like the day was holding its breath.

He looked down.

The cracks beneath his boots had softened. The color of the earth was changing. Brown giving way to red-gold dust, dry and fine, rising faintly around him like something waking up.

And then the trees began to emerge.

Faint outlines at first. Then trunks. Then leaves. A slow return. Rows of orange trees rising in the dusk light—not planted, but revealed. Ezra didn’t move. The wind in the leaves was real. The ground beneath him had texture. The scent of fruit was thicker now, older than anything he’d known, but right.

And in the middle of it—half-formed but unmistakable—was the house.

It stood where it had once belonged, its roof catching the light like it remembered how to be home. The ache at his old scar flickered again—not pain, exactly, but memory. The place in him that had always felt like it had been cut and stitched, same as the house.

It was beautiful. Ezra turned slowly in place, taking it all in. This grove, this ground—this was the origin point. Before the move. Before the seam. Before the split. He stood in the center of what could have been.

He didn’t pray out loud. But something in him whispered, Lord, let me see

The trees swayed gently. The house held, just long enough to ache.

Then the light shifted again.

Slowly, the grove began to fade. The trunks lost density. The scent thinned. Leaves became outlines. The house dissolved like breath in cold air. The grove melted into wildness. Grass now. Scrub. A few gnarled trees with roots that remembered more than the branches ever could. Uneven earth. Tall weeds. A patch of broken glass. A place someone might return to without knowing why.

He heard the crunch of a boot behind him.

“You good?”

Ezra turned.

A man stood near the fender of a dusty pickup, one foot up on the bumper, cigarette resting loosely in his fingers. He wore a sweat-darkened T-shirt, dirt smudged along his forearm, like he’d been leaning into the day. His posture was easy, but aware. Like someone who belonged to the ground he stood on.

Ezra stared.

He knew that jawline. The way the brow settled over the eyes. The shape of the mouth when it didn’t know what to say. Even the light dusting of freckles on the arms–-mirrors of his own.

The man straightened slightly, narrowing his eyes. “Didn’t expect anybody out here.”

Ezra took a half-step back. “I didn’t expect to be here.”

“Yeah?” The man took a slow drag from the cigarette, then glanced toward the center of the lot. “Funny. I felt like I should come out this way. Wasn’t planning on it.”

They stood facing each other, and for a moment, the space between them held something heavier than air.

Ezra couldn’t look away. This wasn’t just resemblance—it was recognition. The curve of the jaw, the set of the eyes. The same features from the visions—the man on the tailgate, the one crouched in the wild grove. Lived-in now. Breathing. Real.

The other man shifted, slower now, like he felt it too. “You look like me.”

Ezra nodded, heart ticking loud in his ears. “I know.”

The man stepped forward, extending a hand. Ezra reached for it, and when their palms met, something quiet passed between them. It wasn’t electricity or revelation. Just a stillness. Like a question had been waiting, and neither of them had the language for it yet.

“You got a name?” the man asked.

“Ezra.”

A pause. Then: “Jake.”

They shook once, then let go.

Ezra glanced at the ground—the dirt, the brittle grass, the last hint of dust still clinging to his boots. 

They both reached for the back of their necks at the same time—then noticed. Neither said anything. Their exhale overlapped. Not quite the same breath, but close enough to feel it.

Same stance. Same ground.
But something had realigned.Ezra didn’t know what it meant.
Only that it had begun.