Gregor

His glasses showed tiny scratches in the window light. The room was crowded around him with plants, thick and thin, that grew up and down the walls, climbing and falling like road maps on the plaster. He often wondered where he would go if he followed them. His elbow rustled the paper underneath it on the desk. His chin itched on his hand, the short hair caught against his palm.
He watched the birds on his feeder, suet and sunflower, and the rabbits around their three holes on his backyard hill. A slight smile rested softly on his lips, a mellow sweetness, like good tobacco, still to be tasted there. His tongue snuck out and captured the last hint of it.
Clouds were rolling in over the further land beyond his own, the sun still close to him licking at the rain below their blanket. An epic battle. He straighted away from his rest on the desk, looking down and straightening his letter.

Gregor,
I know it's been a long time since you decided not to follow me any more, but you need to hear this at least - watch the phantom, she will show you what to do.

There was more, but Gregor didn't have time to read it. He only had seconds, he knew. A deep breath, and he turned from the letter and the strange war of light beyond the window to the shadowy entrance of the hall. Like all the house, the hall was a tunnel of old and new leaves, a green and brown patchwork of stems and vines that darkened and narrowed its breadth even as they brought the deep wild life that he loved. As he looked into its mouth, the shadows there spread into a deep blue-black, and the girl floated into the room. She was short and plain, her faded flower print dress covered at her shoulders by ebony hair that flowed forward from the depth of the hall. She stepped slowly over the roots and the old carpet. He couldn't draw his eyes away, and she smiled at him, her small face shining beautifully inside the dark frame of her unbraided bangs that sucked away the light around it and poured it into her fine features.
'Hello, Gregor,' her voice was young and sweet. He nodded stiffly, silent, and she laughed with teasing playfulness.
'Hello, ah, welcome,' he was finally able to press out. He pushed at his glasses with a nervous finger.
'Well thank you,' she accepted his words with her own nod, graceful and childishly mocking.