Elain lived in the shadow of a wisteria tree that had never stopped weeping.

Every spring, it bloomed out of rhythm—too soon, too soft, like it didn’t understand time anymore. Its blossoms spilled like lilac tears across the veranda, pooling at her bare feet. She never brushed them away. She just stood in them. Like maybe if she stayed still enough, the grief might pass through her instead of lodging in her lungs again.

You watched her from the edge of the garden. A figure cut from dusk and distance.

You didn’t mean to keep showing up. But some pull—subtle and sickly-sweet—kept drawing you back to this ruined corner of Velaris, where the flowers were always a little too vivid and the silence held its breath.

She was always already there.

Her hands were stained green at the fingertips, like chlorophyll had become part of her bloodstream. She moved like she was half-root. Not fragile, just… slow. Careful. Like everything she touched had once broken and she was afraid to do it again.

You knew that feeling. You were stitched together wrong, too.

There was something strange about how she saw the world—how she bent down to mend a snapped tulip stem with her bare fingers and didn’t flinch when it bled magic instead of sap. She buried old bones beneath the marigolds. You saw that, once. You didn’t ask whose they were. The earth took them gently. That was enough.