Page 5

CLARA

I shouldn’t be doing this.

I mean, I know I shouldn’t. Ryder would scowl. Julie might actually use her “I’m not mad, just disappointed” voice. And Mags would probably smuggle me lemon bars as a consolation prize for getting grounded by an ancient forest spirit.

But I’m here anyway.

At the Grove’s edge, holding a mason jar of warm compost tea in one hand and a cloth pouch of seed mixes in the other like offerings to a god I’m not sure believes in offerings.

I haven’t slept much since it happened.

Not because I’m scared—though, yeah, I probably should be—but because I keep replaying it. The vines flaring. The pulsing magic. The man who wasn’t just a man stepping from the shadows like he was carved from the woods themselves.

And the way he looked at me.

Like he was… studying me.

Like he already knew who I was.

I take a breath and crouch beside the same half-buried stone, fingers curling tight around the jar. My knees ache but I don’t shift. Movement might break the spell, if there is one.

“Hi again,” I whisper, eyes low.

No answer. Just the soft sigh of a breeze and the occasional flicker of sun through the canopy.

I swallow. “I brought tea. For the roots. I mean—not for you. Unless you like compost. That’d be weird. But, um, yeah…”

I unscrew the jar and pour a slow trickle of the murky brown liquid into the soil near the base of the vine. It steams faintly as it soaks in.

“And seeds,” I add, holding up the pouch. “Just native pollinators and some thyme. For the bees.”

Still nothing.

I shift uncomfortably and glance around. No glowing eyes in the underbrush. No shadowy limbs peeling out of trees.

He’s not here.

My chest tugs in a way I don’t like.

I set the pouch gently on the moss, like a peace flag made of burlap and chamomile.

“I don’t want to mess anything up,” I say, barely above a whisper. “You didn’t have to let me go. I know that. So… thanks.”

The silence stretches, long and lazy.

I sit cross-legged and sigh, twirling the pouch’s drawstring between my fingers.

“Everyone keeps talking about the Grove like it’s haunted,” I say softly. “Or cursed. But it doesn’t feel like that to me. It feels… sad . Like something waiting for something that already passed it by.”

I reach out to touch the vine again, but stop an inch shy.

Instead, I press my palm flat against the soil. It's warm.

“I’m not magical,” I murmur. “But I care about growing things. My dad taught me that. He didn’t believe in magic either, but he loved soil like it had a pulse.”

I glance toward the deeper trees.

“Is that why you didn’t come back?” I ask. “Because I don’t belong?”

A sharp breeze rushes through the clearing, stirring leaves and lifting the edge of my hair.

I freeze.

Then slowly exhale. It’s just the wind.

Probably.

I pack up the empty jar and gather the seed pouch, leaving a few loose sprinkles behind like crumbs on a trail. Just in case.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” I say quietly, standing.

And I do.

The next day. And the next.

Each time, I bring something small—mint cuttings, a little basket of worm castings, one perfect tomato from the garden. I speak softly. Sometimes I read aloud from my dad’s old journal, the one with the sketch of a tree he swore used to move when he wasn’t looking.

But Thorn doesn’t come.

No glowing eyes. No moving shadows. No presence at all.

The Grove is still.

And yet… not silent .

The vines closest to the path continue to shift. Just subtly. Curling closer, arching toward my voice like sunflowers chasing light.

One evening, as the sky softens to peach and gold, I catch a glimmer in the far trees—just a flicker. Could be a trick of the light. Could be nothing.

Still, I smile.

“Good night,” I whisper.

No answer.

But a single leaf drifts down from the canopy, spinning slow in the air, and lands near my boot.

I take that as a maybe.

That night, sleep comes slow.

I toss in my cot, one leg tangled in the blanket, breath shallow with thoughts I can’t put words to. The woods hum behind my eyelids.

And when I finally drift under, I’m there again.

In the Grove.

But it’s different now.

The air glows faintly green, like moonlight filtered through stained glass. The trees don’t sway—they watch . Not menacing. Just aware. As if they remember me.

And in the center, half-shadowed by ivy and vine, someone waits.

Tall. Still.

His eyes are what I see first.

Glowing green. Gentle, not cold. Familiar in a way that makes my chest ache.

He doesn’t speak.

He doesn’t have to.

He looks at me like I belong here.

Like I’ve always belonged.

I reach out—but just as my fingers graze his, the dream unravels like petals in the wind.

I wake to silence and the lingering warmth of eyes I’ve never seen in daylight, but somehow trust completely.

The next morning, I stir my tea slower than usual.

The dream clings to me like dew—soft, persistent, impossible to ignore. Those eyes. I know they weren’t imagined.

I should tell someone.

I should at least mention it to Julie. She’s warm and kind, and she’d listen without laughing. But the thought of it—of speaking his presence aloud, of reducing what I saw to words—feels wrong.

Private.

Sacred.

I picture Thorn’s face. The lines in his bark. The quiet way he stepped back rather than forward. He didn’t ask for attention. He didn’t want an audience.

And somehow, I know—he wouldn’t want more humans sniffing around his home, trying to fix or explain something they don’t understand.

I bite my lip and sip the tea, burning my tongue slightly.

No.

Not yet.

This stays between us.

Whatever this is.