Petal Willowbloom stepped onto the sea glass path that led to the guardian's threshold. The small stone cabin waited at its end, roofed in lily pads. She had come to be seen. She had come to be chosen. But her hands were empty. She stopped beside a stone heart resting in the moss, ivy curled across it, a two-toned lotus open at its center. The forest had made this. She had not. Bringing it would be borrowing beauty, not offering it. Shame pressed against her ribs. Every petitioner left something. She had nothing shaped by her own care. Then she knelt. She gathered smooth river rocks from the shallow water and stacked them, smallest at the top. She pressed moss into the gaps. She tucked tiny rosebuds between the stones, one for each season she had spent guarding roots no one watched. The small tower stood waist-high when she finished. It was not grand. It was hers. She lifted it carefully and carried it the last steps to the cabin door. She set the cairn on the threshold stone and stepped back. The forest went quiet around her. Something inside the cabin shifted, listening. Her offering had been received.

Petal stepped back from the threshold and felt the quiet hold. Her cairn stood where she had set it. The cabin door did not open. No voice came. She had been heard, but she had not been answered. She found a hollow white oak near the path, its trunk wide and split open at the base, pink blossoms scattered through its old branches. She settled into the opening and folded her legs beneath her. This would be her waiting place. From her pocket she drew a smooth stone, teal and mint green swirled across its surface. She pressed her thumb into its cool curve. Her breath slowed. The waiting was hers to do, and she would not fill it with worry. Still, silence could be mistaken. If she sat too still, the guardian might think she had given up and gone. She needed to leave a sign that she remained. She rose and gathered what the forest offered nearby. Wild roses. Trailing vines. Pale daisies. She wove them into a tall standing arrangement beside the cabin path, climbing upward like a small green tower. Butterflies drifted down to rest on the petals. The arrangement breathed where she could not speak. She returned to the hollow oak and sat again, stone in hand. The cabin stayed quiet. But now the path between her and the door was marked with living proof. She was here. She was still here. And the waiting had become her answer.

Petal kept her seat in the hollow oak through the long middle of the day. The stone warmed in her palm. Down the path, her standing arrangement of roses and daisies held steady, and butterflies still came and went. The cabin door stayed shut. She had told herself she would not move, and she had not moved. But her stomach had begun to fold in on itself, and the folding had grown teeth. She had not eaten since before she came. The forage she knew lay a good walk from here, past the bend where she could no longer see the cabin. If she went, she might miss the first sign. If she stayed, the hunger would take her attention from the watching, which was worse. She pressed the stone harder and looked around the hollow for anything she had missed. The oak had been kinder to her than she knew. Someone, long ago, had set a small wooden bench just outside the split trunk, its back carved with daisies and berries and a name worn soft by weather. Vines had climbed the seat over the years. One of them, twisting up the armrest and into the low branches, was heavy with pale grapes. They hung in a thick cluster within arm's reach. White, round, full. She had been sitting beside her supper. She pulled one free and bit. The skin broke clean. The juice was cold and faintly sweet. She ate slowly, a few at a time, and watched the path. The hunger eased. She did not have to leave. The oak had given her what she needed to keep her promise. When she looked up again, something had changed at the edge of the clearing. A bed of tulips stood near the cabin wall that had not been there at dawn. Red, yellow, blue, violet, green — every color crowded together over a scatter of smooth river rocks. Petal knew that ground. It had been bare earth an hour ago. No one had walked past her to plant them. Beside the tulips, a young fawn stepped out from behind the cabin. Its coat was marked with small white lotus shapes, and the tips of its ears were bright teal. It looked at her once, calmly, the way the presence in the clover had looked at her. Then it lowered its head to the flowers and began to graze. Petal sat very still. Her hand closed around the stone. The guardian had answered. Not with a voice, not with an open door, but with a bed of color where there had been none, and a small living thing sent to stand in it. She had stayed. She had been fed without leaving. And now she had her first sign. The waiting was no longer only hers. It had become a thing the two of them were doing together.

The fawn did not leave. It ate a few tulips, lifted its head, and looked straight at Petal in the hollow oak. Then it walked a few steps up the path toward her and stopped. It stood there as if waiting. The cabin door stayed shut. The sign had come, and now the sign was asking something of her. Petal pressed the smooth stone into her palm. If she climbed down from the oak and went to the fawn, she left her vigil. She left the spot where she had promised herself she would stay. If she stayed, the fawn might turn and go, and she would have refused the only hand the guardian had offered. Between her hollow and the path stood a low stone wall thick with ivy and bright red lilies that glowed in the afternoon light. It had not been there at dawn either. It marked the line she would have to cross. She watched the fawn for a long time. Its teal-tipped ears flicked. The lotus marks on its coat shifted as it breathed. It did not graze again. It only stood and watched her back. Petal understood then that the waiting in the oak was finished. The guardian had moved the question forward. Staying put was no longer patience. It was refusal. She set the stone on the bench beside the grapevine and climbed down. Her legs were stiff. She walked to the ivy wall and stepped through a gap between the lilies. The path felt different under her feet on this side. She went slowly toward the fawn, hands open at her sides. The fawn turned and walked ahead of her. It led her a short way up the path and stopped at a small open structure she had not noticed before. Pale marble posts held a low roof. Ivy climbed the columns. Lotus flowers grew at the base. The fawn stepped onto the stone floor and stood under the roof as if it belonged there. At its hooves, the ground had changed. Clear water pooled around smooth stones, faintly blue, and small butterflies drifted over the surface. A spring had opened where the fawn had stopped. Petal knelt at the edge and looked into it. Her own face looked back, and behind it, the cabin, smaller now from this new angle. She had left the hollow. She could not unleave it. The fawn lowered its head and drank, then looked at her again, steady and calm. Petal cupped a handful of the cold water and drank too. The vigil she had kept was over. A new one had begun, and this one she would keep on her feet, beside the guardian's messenger, wherever it chose to lead her next.

Petal stayed kneeling at the spring until her knees ached. The fawn lifted its head from the water and stepped off the marble floor. It walked past the lotus flowers at the base of the columns and onto soft ground beyond the pavilion. Petal stood. She thought it would stop again, the way it had stopped at the ivy wall. It did not. It kept walking, slow and steady, until its teal-tipped ears slipped behind a screen of ferns. She took three steps after it and stopped. The path past the pavilion narrowed and grew dim. She did not know where it went. She had promised to keep her vigil on her feet, beside the messenger. But the messenger had not waited for her this time. It had wandered, not led. There was a difference, and she felt it in her chest. She walked to the place where the fawn had last paused. A smooth stone sat at the edge of the path, dusted with neon moss. Two small hoofprints pressed into its surface, clear as ink. A bright pink dragonfly rested on the rim and did not move when she knelt. The stone had not been there before. The guardian had marked the spot. Whether it meant wait here or follow further, she could not tell. Petal sat back on her heels and made herself think. If she chased the fawn into the dim path, she might pass the very sign the guardian had set for her. If she stayed and the fawn was meant to be followed, she would fail him twice in one day. She pressed her palm flat to the marked stone. The hoofprints were turned toward the pavilion, not away. The fawn had left her a direction back, not forward. She had her answer. She returned to the spring. Beside the pool, where butterflies drifted over the smooth stones, she built a small arrangement so the guardian would know she had chosen. She gathered river rocks from the spring's edge and stacked them low. On top she set a round stone she found among the lotus roots, painted by weather into a face of bright petals, with small red beetles clinging to its sides. Around the base she laid a ring of tulips she pulled, one by one, from a rainbow bed that had opened near the columns while she worked. She did not know when the tulips had appeared. She only knew they were meant for her hands. When she finished, a small shed stood at the far side of the pavilion that she was sure had not stood there at dawn. Its walls were set with river rocks in every color. Its roof was layered in pale shells. The door faced the spring. Petal understood. The vigil here was hers to keep. She sat down beside her stone face and the ring of tulips, and she waited where the guardian had told her to wait.