Lunar's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Lunar waits on the gazebo steps for three days. She drinks tea at dawn and watches the bioluminescent flowers pulse with light as the sun sets. No one comes. On the fourth morning, she hears something moving at the clearing's edge — footsteps that stumble and stop, stumble and stop. A fairy collapses near the ancient stones. She's clutching a wooden chest against her ribs, its glass panels pressed with dried flowers. The chest hits the moss first, then she falls beside it. An ethereal blue plant with glowing roots springs up where she lands, marking the exact spot. Lunar runs across the clearing and kneels beside her. The fairy's wings are torn. Her hands are covered in dirt. Lunar opens the chest. Inside are seeds — hundreds of them, sorted into cloth pouches and labeled in careful handwriting. Tea varieties she's never seen before. Some of the pouches are empty, their seeds already planted somewhere else. The fairy opens her eyes and tries to speak, but only manages two words before she passes out again. "They burned it." Lunar carries the fairy to the mushroom tree house she spots beyond the gazebo. It's clearly been abandoned — pink moss glows across its cap, crystals jutting from the trunk like frozen tears. She lays the fairy on a bed of soft moss inside and returns for the chest. The seeds are all that's left of someone's garden. Someone who tried to stay and lost everything. Lunar sits on the mushroom house steps with the chest in her lap and realizes she can't run from this clearing now. Not with another gardener bleeding on the floor behind her. Not with these seeds that need planting. She opens the first pouch and reads the label. Silver Needle White. She'll start with that one.