It began not with an arrival.
But an absence.
No child of seed emerged.
No tendril grew.
No message echoed from the void.
And yet…
Everyone felt it.
Like the pressure of an unseen gaze.
Not watching to judge.
Watching to understand.
The Garden held its breath.
In the days after the First Quiet, something new had settled in the air. It wasn't fear, nor anticipation. It was attention. The kind that demanded nothing and promised everything. The kind that happens just before a story becomes something else.
Jevan noticed it first in the way the paths twisted.
Where once the Garden bent to intention, growing in elegant arcs from shared belief and narrative, now the trails wound unexpectedly. Not wrong. Just… unchosen.
As though the Garden had decided to move on its own.
As though it had heard the silence, and now was writing for itself.
