4345.96 · April 6, 2025 AD
Soil That Remembers
The Colombian woman doesn't ask questions like a customer. She asks like someone who already knows what answers should sound like. Seeds that won't grow until spoken to by name. Soil that remembers. Specimens she recognises from archives that no longer officially exist. She studies Daniel with the calm assessment of someone weighing whether to reveal herself—then chooses warmth over exposure. Then she's gone. But her words remain.
The queue never quite disappears. Maeve's Portal Cappuccino draws gasps as it shifts from mahogany to purple. Rowan's stories about "magical soil" earn a quiet warning from Daniel. Isla handles pointed questions about their "unusual" house blend with practised deflection.
Then the strangers arrive.
A woman in a navy suit who once ran a café in Bogotá. An academic with wire-rimmed glasses who asks about pH-sensitive compounds and greenhouse varietals. A Colombian woman who speaks of the Fundación Laurisilva, of partners in the Azores and Samarkand, of soil that remembers and seeds that wait to be spoken to by name.
"Those are not ornamental," she says quietly, studying the display plants. "I've seen similar specimens in the Quimbaya archives."
Daniel offers the scripted response—just decorative, part of the display—but something has shifted. This woman carries secrets too. She's lived with the weight of protection.
Afterwards, Nathan approaches. "She wasn't a tourist."
"No," Daniel agrees. "She's lived with secrets too."
And for the first time, Daniel senses other secrets walking beside him. Ones he hasn't been told.
Ones closer than he realised.
