Elder Margaret held the baby up to the morning light, studying the tiny embroidered mark on the collar of her nightgown. A pattern she'd seen before, though she couldn't place where. The stitching was fine work, the kind that took time and care, and people who abandoned babies didn't usually dress them in clothes made with such attention. She turned the fabric between her fingers. The thread was silk, dyed a deep forest green, and formed the shape of three overlapping leaves. She carried the baby to the window and looked closer at the pattern. An acorn, she realized. Three oak leaves arranged around a small sprouting acorn, the kind with a pale shoot just beginning to push through. Margaret glanced across the clearing toward the woods, where the old oak stood with its carved sign. Her chest tightened. Someone had dressed this child in a message, not just a nightgown. Someone who knew what the oak meant, who understood the clearing as sanctuary. The baby wasn't just abandoned. She was sent here on purpose, and Margaret would need to find out why.

Margaret needed to know where the silk thread came from. She'd held it up to the light that morning, examined the weave and the dye, and recognized the quality. Someone local had made this nightgown, someone with skill and resources. The kind of work that didn't come cheap or easy in Animal Forest. She asked around the clearing first, then walked the paths between cabins, showing the nightgown to anyone who would look. Most shook their heads. A few admired the stitching but claimed no knowledge of it. Then Summer paused when Margaret held up the collar, squinting at the silk thread in the afternoon light. She touched it carefully, rubbed it between her fingers, and said there was only one loom in the commune that could produce work this fine. Margaret followed her past the garden plots to a small clearing she'd walked by a dozen times without noticing. The loom sat beneath a canvas shelter, weighted with stones and acorn caps, silk strands still stretched across the frame in pale green rows. The same color as the embroidery on the baby's nightgown. Margaret's chest went tight. Whoever left the baby wasn't a stranger passing through. They lived here, among them, close enough to use this loom. Close enough to know exactly what the oak tree meant. She'd been searching for someone far away, someone desperate, someone she'd never met. But the person who left this child knew the clearing as home, and that changed everything about what came next.