Page 7 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc

IVY

T he orchard never sleeps.

It rustles and mutters even when the stars hang heavy and low, even when the moon spills herself across the ground like she's trying to soothe something ancient. There’s a weight to the dark here—not threatening, not quite—but dense.

Like the trees have lungs and they’re holding their breath for whatever happens next.

I should be inside. Should be curled up on the secondhand couch in the front room with a blanket wrapped around me and a mug of tea slowly cooling at my side like a halfway attempt at normal. But the house is too quiet in all the wrong ways. And I couldn’t sleep if you paid me.

Something called me out here.

I don’t mean that poetically. I mean I woke to wind threading itself through my hair, to my name whispered with more urgency than dream logic can carry. And instead of pretending it wasn’t real, I followed it.

Barefoot.

In October.

I walk past the swing that still tilts crooked, past the rows of pomegranate trees too stubborn to fruit, down the trail that shouldn’t still be imprinted in my memory but is. The moonlight silver-coats the bark and the leaves and the tips of my fingers when I reach out without thinking.

I stop when I see it.

One of the south trees is in bloom.

A burst of pale-pink petals crowding its limbs like it's forgotten what season it is. Like it’s drunk on moonlight and old grief.

I step closer, drawn, and breathe in. It smells like the first time I kissed someone I shouldn't have and the last time I saw my mother press her palm to the trunk of a tree and whisper her name into it.

It smells like something I left behind.

“You’re not supposed to be out here alone.”

I don’t jump—though I should. His voice always lands low and rough, like it was meant to be spoken into the dirt. Garruk steps out from behind one of the older walnut trunks, half-shadow and half-statue, arms crossed over his chest like that’s the only way he knows how to hold himself together.

“You don’t own the orchard,” I say, not turning.

“No,” he says. “But it owns you.”

I roll my eyes and finally look at him. “You’ve got to stop saying things like that unless you want people to think you’ve been spending too much time with Lettie and her allegedly sentient jam jars.”

He doesn’t smile. But he steps closer.

“You heard it, didn’t you?” he asks.

I hesitate. Then nod. “It said my name.”

“It always has.”

We stand there, two figures in a place that feels too alive for silence. The tree rustles overhead, petals falling like slow snow around us. It’s stupidly beautiful and I hate how much of me softens under the weight of it.

“You think it wants something from me?” I ask. “The land. The orchard. Whatever it is?”

“I think it wants you to choose,” he says.

“Choose what?”

“To stay. To listen. To stop pretending like you can walk away without a cost.”

My laugh is short and bitter. “You talk about it like it’s a person.”

“It might be older than that.”

I shake my head and crouch beside the tree, fingertips grazing one of the fallen blooms. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“No one said you did.”

He steps closer again, and I feel it—the heat of him in the air, the low rumble of breath he tries to hold back when he’s thinking too much and saying too little.

“You believe in fate?” I ask.

“No.”

That surprises me. “Really?”

“I believe in stubborn choices and the weight of them. Fate’s just the excuse people use when they’re scared of picking.”

I rise slowly, dusting my hands on the hem of my old flannel. “Then what is this?”

“This?” He nods toward the tree. “This is the land remembering you. And maybe asking if you remember it back.”

I stare at him.

“You make everything sound like a riddle,” I say.

“You make everything sound like a fight.”

“That’s because it usually is.”

Another petal drifts down, lands in my hair. I don’t brush it away. Garruk’s watching me now—not just looking, but really seeing. Like he’s trying to memorize something.

And I hate how much it makes me want to reach for him.

“What happens if I choose to leave?” I ask, voice quieter now.

“The orchard closes,” he says. “Goes quiet again. Cold. Dead.”

“And you?”

He doesn't answer right away.

“I don’t know.”

I look down at my hands. They’re trembling, just a little.

There’s too much between us. Too many years. Too much silence. And yet, here we are, two people who should be strangers, standing like something's always lived in the space where our hands don’t quite touch.

“Are we a riddle too?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “We’re unfinished.”

And then his hand brushes mine. Just fingers, grazing. Testing. Waiting.

I don’t pull away.

The tree hums above us, branches arching like they know what we’re doing and approve. Garruk’s hand lingers—warm, rough, grounding—and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

“I’m not ready,” I whisper.

“I’m not asking you to be.”

We stand there, fingers barely linked, the orchard swaying around us like it’s dreaming again for the first time in years. The moon watches from above, and the wind carries our silence deeper into the trees.

And for the first time since I came home, I don’t feel like I’m running.