Nobody spoke after the child's words settled into the clearing.
Before there was a Garden... someone welcomed me.
The sentence hung in the night air, and Sarya found herself unable to look away from the small figure standing beside the ancient chair, their impossibly old eyes catching the moonlight in a way that made the moment feel larger than the space it occupied.
The gardener approached slowly. Unlike everyone else in the clearing — unlike Grace, whose cup still lay in shattered pieces at her feet, unlike Father, whose face had gone the color of old paper — the gardener did not look shocked.
He looked sad.
Not the sharp, sudden sadness of unwelcome news. Something older than that. The particular grief of a person who had hoped, quietly and for a very long time, never to hear a certain sentence spoken aloud again.
Sarya noticed it immediately.
"You already knew," she said.
