Echoes in the Feed

They think they know us. They know the usernames. They know the livestreams. They know the jokes, the emojis, the late-night conversations that happened in public. They think every smile means love. Every silence means anger. Every goodbye means forever. But people have always mistaken stories for truth. My name is Zyra. His name isn't really Jester. And this is the story no one ever saw.

The glowing rectangle of my laptop screen cast a familiar, cool light on my face, a stark contrast to the fading warmth of the afternoon sun seeping through the window. Outside, the city hummed its relentless, urban song, a melody I’d grown accustomed to, but one that never quite managed to drown out the rustling of pine needles or the distant, mournful cry of the Baltic Sea in my memories. I was in London, a sprawling, magnificent beast of a city, but my heart, or at least a significant chunk of it, was still back in Lithuania, nestled amongst whispering forests and ancient barrows.

Tonight, the forest was calling particularly loudly. The air in my small flat felt thick, charged with an unseen energy, like the moments just before a storm breaks. I’d spent the last hour scrolling through my social media feeds, a digital tapestry woven with threads of manufactured joy and carefully curated anxieties. It was a world I navigated with a practiced ease, a storyteller’s instinct for the dramatic, the unexpected. I posted a picture of a steaming mug of herbal tea, a sprig of juniper sticking out like a defiant little flag. The caption read: “Brewing up some old magic tonight. The wind outside sounds like it’s singing forgotten names. Anyone else feeling it?”

Almost immediately, a notification pinged. My breath hitched, a silly, involuntary reaction. It was him. Jester.

His username, a playful jumble of letters, was as much a part of his online persona as the dazzling, almost blinding smile he projected in every photo and video. Jester. He was a performer, a comedian, a man who seemed to have an endless supply of witty comebacks and perfectly timed punchlines. We’d met a few months ago, in the chaotic, neon-lit realm of an online forum dedicated to independent artists. I’d posted a snippet of a folktale I was working on, a dark, atmospheric piece about a forest spirit and a lost traveler, and he’d replied with a joke so absurd, so perfectly off-kilter, that I’d laughed out loud, startling my cat, a sleek black shadow named Kūma.

His comment had been something about the forest spirit needing better Wi-Fi.

Now, his reply to my “forgotten names” post popped up: “Ah, yes, the wind. Pretty sure it’s just the neighbour’s dodgy aerial again. Or maybe it’s a flock of pigeons arguing over a discarded Greggs sausage roll. Either way, sounds more exciting than my Tuesday. Send tea, will travel.”

I grinned, the corners of my mouth turning up naturally, a genuine smile that had nothing to do with performance. That was Jester. Charismatic, quick, and always managing to inject a dose of levity into whatever he touched. He lived somewhere on the other side of the world, a place I imagined was sunny and bright, filled with the constant buzz of an adoring audience. He was all sharp angles and bright colours, while I felt more like a shadowed corner, filled with dust motes and the scent of old paper.

“The pigeons are definitely plotting something nefarious,” I typed back, my fingers flying across the keyboard. “Probably a coup d’état against the local squirrels. And the wind… well, it’s more of a lament for lost gods, I think. Less Greggs, more ancient rites.”

His reply was swift: “Lost gods? Sounds like my last performance review. Still, I prefer a good sausage roll to a lament. More satisfying. Though, I suppose a lament could be turned into a killer stand-up routine. ‘So, I was talking to this ancient god the other day, right? Turns out, he’s really struggling with his mortgage…’”

I laughed again, a little louder this time. He had a way of taking the most fantastical, the most ethereal, and grounding it with a dose of everyday absurdity. It was a skill, a talent, and I found myself looking forward to his messages more than I cared to admit. Our conversations, initially a series of playful exchanges, had deepened. We talked about our creative projects, our frustrations, our small triumphs. He’d sent me a short video of himself performing a hilarious, impromptu juggling routine in what looked like his kitchen, a blur of fruit and flying napkins. I, in turn, had shared recordings of myself reading snippets of Lithuanian myths, my voice a little shaky at first, but growing steadier with each passing story.

“Your voice is like honey poured over gravel,” he’d texted after one of my readings. “In the best possible way. Like a fairy godmother who’s had a really rough night.”

I’d blushed, a ridiculous warmth spreading through my chest. Nobody had ever described my voice like that. My Lithuanian accent, something I’d tried to smooth out for years, was usually met with polite confusion or an impatient request to speak more clearly. But Jester seemed to embrace it, to find something beautiful in its unfamiliar cadence.

Tonight, though, the memories were particularly insistent. The juniper tea was supposed to help, a fragrant reminder of the forests back home, of the wild herbs my grandmother used to gather, her hands gnarled like ancient roots, her eyes holding the wisdom of generations. She was the one who had filled my childhood with stories, tales of Laima, the goddess of fate, of Perkūnas, the thunder god, of the Žemyna, the earth mother. She’d spoken of forests that breathed, of rivers that remembered, of the moon that listened to secrets.

I remembered one particular summer, the air thick with the scent of pine and damp earth, the sun a golden disc filtering through the dense canopy. I must have been ten, maybe eleven. I’d wandered too far from the cottage, drawn by the haunting call of a cuckoo. The trees grew closer, their branches intertwining like skeletal fingers, and the familiar path vanished. Panic, cold and sharp, began to prickle at the edges of my awareness. I was lost. Truly, utterly lost.

Then, I heard it. Not the cuckoo, but a soft rustling, closer than the wind. A raven, sleek and black as midnight, landed on a low-hanging branch just ahead of me. It cocked its head, its obsidian eye seeming to bore right into me. It wasn’t just a bird. There was an intelligence in its gaze, a knowing. It croaked, a sound that was more like a question than a call, and then, it took flight, not away, but in a specific direction, deeper into the woods.

My grandmother had always said ravens were messengers, that they carried secrets on their wings. My rational mind, even then, told me it was just a bird. But my heart, the part of me that was steeped in folklore and wild magic, knew better. I followed. The raven led me through a maze of trees, over moss-covered logs, until, finally, I saw it – the familiar shimmer of the Baltic Sea through a break in the foliage. I was close to home.

I’d never told anyone about the raven. It was one of those moments that felt too sacred, too fragile, to be exposed to the harsh light of everyday explanation. It was a secret I held close, a seed of wonder planted deep within me.

A new message from Jester jolted me back to the present. “You’re quiet tonight. Lost in your own epic tale? Or is Kūma demanding tribute in the form of head scratches? My cat, Schrödinger, is currently contemplating the existential dread of an empty food bowl. It’s quite profound, really. He’s thinking about the void.”

I smiled. Schrödinger. Of course, his cat was named Schrödinger. It was perfect. “Kūma is currently engaged in a staring contest with a dust bunny. She’s winning, naturally. And I’m not lost in an epic tale, exactly. More like… revisiting one. Sometimes the past has a way of feeling more real than the present, you know?”

I hesitated before sending that last sentence. It was a truth I rarely articulated, even to myself. The past wasn’t just a collection of memories for me. It was a tangible presence, a landscape I could sometimes step back into, especially when the veil between worlds felt thin. The scent of pine, the whisper of the wind, the call of the raven – they weren’t just sensory triggers. They were invitations.

His reply came a moment later, slower this time, as if he was carefully considering his words. “I think I get that. My past feels like a really bad improv show I can’t get off stage from. Everyone’s laughing, but I’m just trying to remember my lines. What about you? What kind of past are you revisiting?”

The question hung in the digital air between us. How could I explain? How could I tell him that my past wasn’t just a collection of embarrassing moments or forgotten trends? It was filled with the murmur of ancient tongues, with the rustle of unseen presences in the woods, with the feeling of the earth breathing beneath my bare feet. It was a past that held magic, a magic that sometimes felt like it was seeping into my present, blurring the edges of what was real and what was imagined.

I thought about the ravens. I thought about the wind singing forgotten names. I thought about the moon, a silver disc hanging in the Lithuanian sky, a silent witness to rituals long past.

“It’s… full of old stories,” I typed, choosing my words with deliberate care. “Stories that feel alive. Stories where the trees have voices and the rivers carry memories. It’s a bit wild, I suppose. Not exactly the sort of thing you can put on a stage.”

There was a pause, a longer one this time. I held my breath, half expecting him to make a joke, to deflect with his usual effortless humour. But the silence stretched, pregnant with unspoken thoughts.

Then, his reply appeared, short and simple. “I’d like to hear those stories, Zyra. The wild ones.”

My heart did a strange little flip. It was a simple sentence, but it felt like a door opening, a bridge being extended across the vast expanse of our separate lives. He wasn’t asking for the polished, edited version. He was asking for the real thing, the untamed, the potentially unbelievable.

As I sat there, bathed in the cool glow of the screen, the wind outside my London window picked up, a low, mournful sigh that seemed to carry the scent of pine and distant, salt-laced air. For a fleeting moment, I could almost see it – a sleek, black raven perched on the sill, its obsidian eye fixed on me, a silent messenger from a world that was both gone and yet, somehow, still very much present. They think they know us. But they only know the usernames, the livestreams, the carefully constructed facades. They don’t know the stories that whisper in the dark, the magic that clings to the edges of our lives, the forgotten gods that still hold sway in the quiet corners of our hearts. And tonight, for the first time, I felt a flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe, someone might be ready to listen to the wild ones.