The Millbrook's manor sat at the north end of the main road, where the cobblestones gave way to a gravel path lined with flowers that had no business blooming this vigorously in early spring.
Celestia noticed the flowers first.
Not because they were extraordinary — they were ordinary enough, a tumbling border of pale yellow and white along either side of the walk — but because of the 'care' in them. Someone had planted these deliberately, maintained them, watered them when the border soil gave nothing freely.
The same hands that had planted them had probably weeded them too, which meant whoever did the gardening here had time and intent and found the work worth doing.
Her eyes moved up.
The manor itself was— old. That was the honest word for it. The stone of the outer walls had the weathered grey of decades, the kind of color that stone earned slowly through frost cycles and hard summers.
The window frames were original wood, darkened with age.
