Sir Baaington stood in the quiet grove just past the crooked sign, muttering lines from an old poem he had been working on for weeks. The words came out slow and deliberate, the way he liked them.
He was trying to get the rhythm right for a verse about waiting for rain that never arrived. One line in particular kept tripping him up: "And the sky holds its breath, stubborn as stone."
He said it again. This time the words hung in the air longer than they should. Not echoing, exactly. Just... lingering.
The sun, which had been sliding toward afternoon, seemed to pause. A leaf that had been falling stopped halfway to the ground. Sir Baaington blinked. The blink took longer than usual.
Raphael walked by on one of his daily routes. He called them structured nonsense walks because he still needed some kind of order, even if the order was to do pointless things on purpose.
