Alexander didn't make a speech.
He never did.
Instead, he showed up at dawn with a wheelbarrow full of seedlings—oak, willow, and something new with silver-veined leaves—and started replanting the eastern fence line. Not to fortify. To mark.
Scarlett watched from the porch, coffee gone cold in her hands. She'd known him long enough to read his silences. This one was heavy. Final.
By mid-morning, others joined him—not out of duty, but because they sensed something shifting in the air, like the hush before rain that never comes.
Luna was the first to ask.
"You're leaving," she said, not as accusation, but as fact.
Alexander didn't stop digging. "Not all of us. Just those who choose to."
"Why?"
He paused, trowel in hand, dirt under his nails. "Because staying here means becoming part of the next system. And I've seen how those get built—even with good intentions."
Scarlett stepped down from the porch, boots crunching on frost-laced gravel. "We're not building a system."
