4345.96 · April 6, 2025 AD
Somewhere Else
The greenhouse holds its breath differently at night. Plants that seem ordinary by daylight reveal other qualities under moonlight—leaves that turn toward Daniel's touch, vibrations that feel almost like acknowledgment. He's tended them his whole life without fully understanding what they are. Tonight, Moira begins to tell him. Promises older than the café, older than modern borders. Gifts that came with obligations.
The greenhouse holds its breath in silver light.
Daniel moves between rows of plants that shimmer with inner luminescence he's always dismissed as moonlight playing tricks. His fingers brush leaves that tremble at his touch—acknowledgment rather than reaction, presence rather than reflex. He's tended these specimens his entire life without fully understanding what they are.
Tonight, Moira begins to tell him.
"This soil came from somewhere... else. Somewhere that shouldn't have been possible."
She speaks of promises made when Scotland's heart beat with different dreams. Of gifts that came with obligations spanning centuries. Of Stewarts and old alliances forged in times when choices determined what—and who—to protect.
"Some debts never truly die. They just wait in the shadows."
Then she's gone, silhouetted against moonlight, guardian at the threshold between ordinary life and something ancient.
Daniel sits alone with cooling coffee and questions multiplying like leaves in spring. Until he notices the scattered soil on the immaculate floor. The hairline crack in the glass that wasn't there this morning. The shadow that passes across moonlit gravel—there and gone, purposeful, watching.
The boundaries are already being tested.
Someone knows where to look.
