Morning light quietly whitened the rocks of Göreme.
Last night, Barış had told himself the same thing again and again.
It was nothing.
He was only tired.
He had come to an unfamiliar place, and the strange landscape had unsettled something inside him.
But the more he tried to believe it, the less the unease in his chest disappeared.
There were still few voices on the small terrace of the guesthouse. Somewhere far off, a cup touched a saucer. A window creaked in one of the rooms. The smell of fresh bread mixed with the cold morning air.
Morning in Cappadocia was different from morning in Ankara.
In Ankara, the city woke slowly, with sound.
Here, it seemed the land woke first.
Barış put on his thin jacket and left the guesthouse.
Today, he was going to Love Valley.
The name made it sound light. Almost easy. But the valley he had seen in photographs had a shape that seemed to refuse human words. Against its gentle name, the rocks kept their silence.
As he walked, the earth made a dry sound beneath his feet.
Small stones rolled under his shoes.
In the distance, tall, narrow stone pillars stood in rows. They did not look made by anyone. More like something time itself had left behind.
Each time the wind moved, it carried the smell of sand.
Not damp.
Dry. Old.
Almost like memory.
Barış stopped and looked at the entrance to the valley.
Tourists’ voices were somewhere in the distance. They should have been close, but somehow they sounded slightly removed from the real world.
“…Nothing will happen today.”
He said it softly.
He thought speaking the words might calm him.
But they were taken by the wind almost at once.
The path into the valley was narrower than he expected.
The rocks on either side drew closer little by little. The sky was wide above him, yet only the ground around his feet seemed to be closing in.
Barış walked.
Not to prove the unease from the past few days.
The opposite.
He wanted to end it.
He only had to look at an ordinary landscape with his own eyes.
There had been no dog.
No shadow.
No gaze.
No footsteps.
Only things that had grown too large inside him.
He was looking for a place where he could believe that.
After walking for a while, the valley opened slightly.
Light came between the rocks and cast a long shadow across the ground.
At the end of that shadow, something stood.
Barış stopped.
It was far away.
But not far enough to be mistaken.
A dog stood deep in the valley.
A large body.
A still posture.
Facing him, and yet not quite facing him.
He could not tell right away whether it was the same dog from yesterday.
And that uncertainty was what frightened him.
Barış’s breath grew shallow.
The dog did not move.
It did not bark.
It did not come closer.
It was simply there.
As if it had known Barış would come.
“…No.”
Barış said it to himself.
It was not yesterday’s dog.
There were dogs in this land.
In villages.
In valleys.
On roads.
That was ordinary.
But the more he tried to think that, the farther the scene moved from ordinary.
Because the dog was not surprised.
It showed no caution at seeing a person.
No sign of wanting food.
It only waited.
The moment the word came to him, Barış pushed it away.
Dogs did not wait for people.
Not for him.
Then small footsteps came from behind.
He turned.
An older man was walking slowly with a cane. A local, perhaps. His hat was pulled low, and his face held shadows older than the morning light.
The man stopped beside Barış and looked into the valley.
“Did you take the wrong path?”
His Turkish was soft, but his voice had a dry edge.
“No. I was just looking.”
Barış answered quietly.
The man nodded and kept his eyes in the same direction.
“If you look too long here, you start seeing things you don’t need to see.”
Barış looked at the side of his face.
“What do you mean?”
The man did not smile.
He only tapped the dry earth lightly with the tip of his cane.
“This valley remembers well what people leave behind.”
After that, he started walking again.
Barış had no words to give back.
What people leave behind.
The words caught somewhere deep in his chest.
Had his father left something behind too?
Or had Barış left something behind himself?
The man’s back moved farther away.
Barış looked into the valley again.
The dog was still there.
In the same place.
In the same posture.
That was the strangest part.
Normally, it would have moved a little.
Reacted to the wind.
To a human voice.
But this dog looked as if it had stepped outside time.
Barış took one step forward.
A stone sounded under his foot.
The sound bounced faintly through the valley.
The dog’s ear moved, just slightly.
Nothing more.
Barış’s chest beat hard.
Was it fear?
Or the need to know?
He couldn’t tell.
Only this—
the word imagination no longer seemed usable.
If it were imagination, the same thing would not appear twice.
If it were imagination, it would not wait like this.
Barış pressed his lips together.
He should not go closer.
Reason said that.
But his feet would not fully turn back.
Wind passed through the valley.
The rock shadows trembled a little.
For a moment, the dog’s outline seemed to tremble too.
It will disappear.
That was what he thought.
But it did not.
It was there.
Again.
There.
Barış could not look away.
And for the first time, somewhere inside him, he admitted it.
This was not coincidence.
Then the dog slowly lifted its head.
It should have been too far.
Still, it seemed their eyes met.
Something cold moved along Barış’s back.
The dog did not bark.
It did not come closer.
It only stood there in silence,
as if it knew something.
Barış could not move.
In the wind, the old man’s words remained.
This valley remembers well what people leave behind.
Barış drew in a small breath.
What was he looking at?
A dog?
A shadow?
Or something his father had left behind?
No answer came.
Only the dog remained still in the depths of the valley.
As if it already knew
the road Barış would walk next.
