Azareel glanced at her, his brow furrowing slightly. "You think something else is listening?" he asked, his voice soft but curious.
"We know it is," Virelya replied, her coils shifting, her golden eyes narrowing.
Sylvara said nothing, but the way her hand pressed to the ground—gentle, reverent—told him she agreed, her flowering hair rustling faintly as a petal fell.
Still, none of them moved to leave, the garden's warmth holding them like a fragile promise.
Instead, Azareel bent down again, his fingers tracing the roots' growth pattern, the vines weaving around a sunken square of stone—flat, firm, central.
"We could build here," he murmured, his voice soft, almost dreamlike. "A hearth. Something small."
"Home," Sylvara whispered, the word hanging in the air like an unripe fruit, heavy with possibility.
