THE GNOME PROJECT

The gnome noticed it before the child said anything.

He noticed the way her feet slowed near the doorway.

The way her eyes flicked—just for a moment—toward the empty bed by the wall.

The way she learned, very quickly, not to look there.

Gnomes are good at noticing that sort of thing.

The spaces that seem small to us are very spacious to them.

That afternoon the young girl was sitting on the floor of her bedroom. The light was beginning to dim, turning low and soft.  Zephyr climbed onto the windowsill and sat with his feet dangling.

“You’re carrying something,” he said.

The child shrugged. “It’s fine.”

The gnome nodded. “Yes. That’s usually what we tell ourselves.”

They  sat quietly for a bit. The house made its normal creaking sounds as the  sun slipped behind the trees and the roof began to cool. Just the  familiar, comforting noises of a fall afternoon.

After a while, the gnome pointed—not directly at the bed, but somewhere near it.

“That place,” he said. “It scares you.”

The child swallowed. “If I look there, it hurts.”

“Yes,” the gnome said. “For a moment, it does.”

She waited for him to tell her how to stop that.

Instead, he said, “Gnomes have a name for this. We call it walking the ladder.”

He  hopped down from the sill, onto the bed, then slid to the floor. With  his finger, he drew a ladder in the dust—simple, uneven rungs.

“Each  time you let yourself look,” he said, “and feel the small sharp part,  it’s like pulling yourself up onto the next rung. The feeling rises up,  surrounds you, and then—because you didn’t run—it passes.”

The child frowned. “But does the ladder go anywhere? Will it stop hurting?”

“Oh, it goes somewhere,” said the gnome. “That part matters.”

He  pointed to the bottom rung. “This is right next to the moment you lost  her. Very close. Very loud. The first step always feels impossibly big.”

Then  he pointed higher. “Each rung gets a little easier to pull yourself  onto. Each one is a little farther away from where it began. The ladder  stays connected to the same moment—but the distance grows.”

“So the ladder makes it go away?”

The gnome shook his head. “No. The ladder stays connected to that moment forever. That’s not the problem.”

He smiled gently.

“The problem is thinking you have to stay at the bottom.”

The child looked at the empty dog bed again. Her chest tightened. It hurt—just like she thought it would.

Then, as quickly as it came, it softened.

She breathed out.

“That was short,” she said.

“Yes,” said the gnome. “That’s why we climb the ladder.”

They  sat together a while longer. The house seemed to stop shifting and  settling, as if it had finally found comfort in its old bones. And  somewhere inside, one rung higher than before, the child  stood—connected, no longer trapped.

The ladder would always be there.

The first step was the hardest.

After that, the next one came a little easier.