Sunlight poured through the oaks in thin, warm bands, stitching light across the herb beds. Elowen knelt in the loam, fingertips easing a sprig of thyme free. The scent rose sharp and green. It steadied her, the way the village always had—quiet work, shared hands, nothing taken that wasn't given back.
Thalor Rootwhisper watched from the stone bench, tall frame relaxed, silver hair threaded with living vines that stirred like they felt the breeze. His deep green eyes held the forest's patience.
"See how it gives?" Elowen lifted the sprig. "It mends without asking."
"Roots bind more than plants," Thalor said, taking the thyme. His callused fingers brushed hers—warm, anchoring. "What we tend here holds the whole together."
She pressed damp soil around a chamomile seedling. The earth clung to her palms, cool and certain. This was her favorite moment: the small strength that rose from simple touch. She felt it in people too—fear easing in a shared breath, worry loosening when a cup of tea found the right hands. Empathy, the elders called it. Elowen only knew it as listening with her whole self until something unknotted.
The oaks shifted. Shadows lengthened. The breeze turned with a thin edge she didn't recognize.
She glanced toward the treeline. "Do you ever feel the woods… looking back?"
Thalor followed her gaze. "Old places always look back." A gentler note entered his voice. "And sometimes they warn."
He told her once how wild thyme steadied a fevered elder while the village linked hands till dawn. She carried those stories like smooth stones in a pocket. They were proofs that what was gentle could also endure.
A child laughed by the stream. Hearth smoke thinned over the roofs. The garden's hum returned—bees, leaves, the quiet tick of cooling stones. It should have soothed her. It nearly did.
Then the unease brushed her again. Like finding rock where roots wanted to pass.
Elowen rose when Thalor offered his hand. "Let's gather the rest," he said. "The evening brew will thank us."
They moved between beds. She palmed mint, yarrow, chamomile. The basket filled, each stem a small promise. The light dropped lower—amber deepening, greens turning blue at the edges. She felt the village in it all: linens breathing on lines, hands exchanging small comforts without keeping score.
"Thalor," she said, tucking a stray auburn curl behind her ear, "what about the stories beyond the oaks? The ones with frayed places."
He considered. "The world is larger than our fields. Some threads tangle. Some snap." His smile was careful. "So we keep ours strong."
She nodded, but the question stayed. If something frayed out there, did it pull here too? Could the way she listened—this quiet reaching—bridge anything beyond their hedges?
They crossed to the path. Warm dust rose around their ankles, sunlight casting their shadows long and thin. Eldra Hearthveil waved from a hearth-circle; Elowen passed her a chamomile head with a grin. The elder's face softened. One more small promise kept.
They returned to the bench as the first coolness found the air. A hush moved through the oaks—a measured, collective stillness that set the tiny hairs on Elowen's arms upright. Not fear. Not yet. Attention.
She looked up.
Between two trunks at the grove's edge, a darker shape held stillness too perfectly. Not the sway of leaves. Not the idle pause of a deer. A held breath.
Elowen barely whispered, "Do you—?"
"I do," Thalor said.
Silence pooled. The garden's scents sharpened: thyme bright as a bell; chamomile soft as fleece; loam deep and honest. Her heart matched the hush, then quickened.
The shape shifted once and vanished into the layered shade.
Thalor exhaled. "The oaks have been whispering all day."
"What do they say?"
"That roots should drink and be ready."
He tried for humor and didn't quite find it. She lifted the basket; its weight surprised her. So much gathered. So much held.
The first star pricked the paling sky.
A sound wove the distance—thin, low, swallowed quickly by leaves. A howl? It threaded the air like a string drawn careful and slow, barely there, then gone. Elowen felt it more than she heard it: a tug along something she couldn't name.
Not threat.
Not comfort.
A reaching.
She swallowed. "That wasn't the wind."
"No," Thalor said quietly.
Her empathy stretched on instinct—how she always tested the air of a room, the heat of a worry, the thrum under a voice. It met… something. Not close, not kind, exactly—wild, restrained, intent. Like the press of a palm against glass.
It startled her enough that she almost dropped the basket.
"Elowen?" Thalor's hand steadied the rim.
"I'm fine." She wasn't lying. She just didn't have words for the newness. She had never felt another presence that wasn't village, wasn't hearth.
The breeze shifted again. Night gathered at the tree line.
"Come," Thalor said. "Brew waits."
They started for the path. The garden exhaled behind them, herbs nodding as if satisfied with what they'd given. Elowen looked back once. The oaks held their posts, dark and many, guarding secrets as old as seed.
The hush returned.
Very far off, that thread-sound drew once more through the dark. Faint. Certain. Answered—somewhere inside her—by an ache she did not understand.
Empathy, reaching back.
The basket handle warmed under her grip. She kept walking. The village lights flickered on, one by one.
Behind the oaks, golden attention lingered.
And listened.