After a long pause, she finally speaks.
“Thorn… is it okay if I ask—why is the tree dimming?”
I don’t answer at first.
Instead, I walk to it—my ward, my anchor. My hand rests on the bark where the glow once bled bright through the cracks. Now it flickers, faint and slow, like a heartbeat going quiet.
“It is dying,” I say.
Clara sucks in a breath. “Wait—what?”
“It began to fade seasons ago. Quietly. Like a tide pulling out.” I glance back at her. “The Grove slowed. I slowed. I thought it would end quietly.”
Her steps crunch over moss as she nears. “But if the tree dies…”
“So do I.”
She freezes. “You mean, like?—”
“I meanfully,” I say, voice low and flat. “Without the ward, my essence unwinds. I am not human. I do not pass. I dissolve.”
There's silence.
“No,” she says.
Firm. Fierce.
It catches me off guard.
“No?” I echo.
“You don’t get to just say that like it’s… like it’sfine.” Her face is pale, but her jaw is set hard. “You’re not furniture, Thorn. You’re not some old statue we let crumble ‘cause it’s inconvenient to fix.”
I stare at her.
No one has ever spoken to me like that.
“You don’t even know what I am,” I murmur.
“I don’t care,” she snaps. “You’reyou. You’re alive. And this place is better because of you.”
Her hands are trembling, balled into fists. Her voice softens. “So no. That tree doesn’t get to die without a fight. Not if I’m here.”
The Grove goes still.
Even the vines listen.
And now… I feel the impossible.
Hope.
She leaves just after sunset.
Doesn’t say goodbye.
Just presses a hand to the moss near the base of the tree—like a promise—and walks away, back along the path with her satchel bumping at her hip and determination in her spine.
I don’t follow.
