’Then what is the first story we should tell?’ Kairos asked, their question not an interruption, but an invitation.
It was a question that hung in the space between them, a single, perfect seed of a story waiting to be planted.
Anya smiled, a slow, gentle unfolding of a thought. ’The story of the first garden,’ she said. ’The one we are planting now.’
Kael, who had been silent until now, shook his head. ’Not a garden,’ he said, his voice the sound of stone and starlight. ’A forge. We are not planting a story. We are hammering it into existence.’
And in the space between the garden and the forge, a new story began to take root, a story of a world that was both grown and made, a story that was still being written.