He Was What Came After- Micro-stories

Foreword

Some people move through the world carrying more than what’s visible. You can feel it when you're with them. Like something about them came from somewhere older—maybe heavier, maybe wiser.

They don’t always know what it is they’re holding. It just shows up in how they react to silence, to change, to loss. You notice it in their timing, their instinct to pull back before things break, or their way of holding on longer than most would.

I’ve known a few people like that.

This story isn’t trying to explain it. But it leans into the idea that some of us come into the world already marked by something bigger than we can name. And whether or not we understand it, we carry it forward.

Quietly. Often alone. But not without meaning.

Image by WiX

He Was What Came After

He was born during a storm so sudden the village lights flickered for days. Not from lightning, but from something else—a pressure in the air, thick and unspoken. The sky had been holding something in. His cry was its release.

They said it was just weather. But weather doesn’t settle into a child’s bones. This did.

As he grew, it became clear—he carried something that didn’t belong entirely to this world. He felt fractures before they formed. Sensed endings before they announced themselves. People mistook it for moodiness. But it was something deeper: a pulse under the surface, always humming.

He never asked to be different. But the truth clung to him—raw, electric, uncomfortable. Flowers bloomed too fast around him. Emotions arrived without context. And sometimes, people would share things with him—secrets, regrets—then retreat, shaken by how much they’d given away.

He wasn’t trying to unearth anything. But truth has its own gravity.

There was a name he once read in a book no one else remembered checking out. The Moist One. A star wrapped in sorrow and clarity. Another name came later—the one who howls before the storm breaks. These weren’t myths. They were echoes. Not identities, but reflections of something ancient that lived within him.

The hunger in him—the pull to understand, to go deeper even when it hurt—wasn't ambition. It was something else. A shadowed craving that had no bottom. And opposite that hunger, just as strong, was a strange detachment. Like he’d lived a thousand endings and no longer expected anyone to stay.

Two forces shaped him: one that pulled him outward, hungry for meaning. And one that pulled him inward, stripped of need. Most people lived between them. He was them.

An old man in a train station once studied his face too long and said,

“You’ve got the eyes of someone who remembers things he never learned. The wind’s been speaking through you.”

He didn’t reply. He never did. Those who understood didn’t need his answer.

He wasn’t built to stay still. He was made to feel too much, too early, too often. And while others tried to avoid storms, he lived close to them. He understood their rhythm. Their cost. Their cleansing.

So when the rain came—and it always did—he didn’t flinch.

He opened the door.

Because the rain never asked permission.

And neither did he.

By Lyia Meta