The last light of day lingered on the river, stretching gold across the slow-moving water. In Stonemere, the gardens were already shadowed, save for the row where the three seeds lay sleeping beneath the soil.

Elara knelt there, fingertips brushing the damp earth. She had not come to water them—Branwyn had done that earlier—but to feel the life she could not yet see.

Branwyn approached quietly, his shadow folding over hers. “They’ll come in their own time.”

She looked up at him, the curve of his face warm in the dusk. “I know.” Her voice was soft. “But I still want to be here.”

He crouched beside her, elbows resting on his knees. “It’s the waiting that’s hardest, isn’t it? You plant something… but you can’t force it to grow.”

Elara’s breath caught, because she knew they were no longer speaking only of seeds. “Yes,” she whispered.

For a time they said nothing, letting the sounds of the village fill the spaces between: the trickle of water over stone, the distant call of a herdsman to his goats, the hush of wind through the willows.

Branwyn’s hand found the soil beside hers. “There are things I’ve carried,” he said, slow and deliberate, “that I don’t always show. Questions I didn’t want to ask. Fears I didn’t want to name.”

She turned toward him, meeting his gaze. “You can ask them now.”

His jaw worked, like the words had to fight their way out. “I wondered… if there’s still part of you somewhere else. With someone else. And if you ever truly came back to me.”

The words landed heavy, but not cruel. They were truth, laid bare.

Elara let them settle before she spoke. “I can’t erase where I’ve been. Or what I felt there. But I’m here, Branwyn. And I’m choosing to be here—every day. That’s what I can give you. The truth of where I am now.”

Branwyn’s eyes softened, though the ache in them remained. “Then that’s what we keep.”

They stayed there, side by side in the quiet.

A small voice carried across the garden. “Mama?”

Leor padded toward them, curls wild from the wind, holding a shallow clay dish sloshing with water. “For the seeds,” he explained, kneeling to pour it into the soil. “So they won’t be thirsty.”

Elara smiled, reaching to steady his hand. “Thank you, love.”

He studied them both for a moment, his brow furrowing. “Will they grow even if it rains too much? Or if it’s cold?”

Branwyn brushed a leaf from his son’s hair. “If we care for them, and give them what they need, they’ll be strong enough to last through storms.”

Leor considered this, then nodded with the solemnity of a promise.

As twilight deepened, the three of them lingered—hands still faintly dirty, the scent of earth and water in the air. Somewhere beyond the gardens, the ground seemed to hum—a pulse deep and old.

Elara felt it, low in her bones. Something in the soil was listening.

She glanced toward the grove at the edge of Stonemere, where the shadows gathered thicker than they should. It was not the kind of watching that made one afraid, but the kind that waited—like a held breath before a word was spoken.

Branwyn followed her gaze but said nothing.

Leor, oblivious, reached for her hand, and together they turned toward home. But Elara knew they were not alone in this quiet place. The earth itself had taken note of their planting.

And soon, it would answer.