The snows melted slowly that year. The hills around Meerfeld sloughed off their icy cloaks one reluctant inch at a time, and the trees, once bare as bones, shuddered and stretched toward the waking sun. Crocuses pushed through cracked frost like tiny fists, and when the first blossoms budded on the trees, their pink-white petals seemed almost shy, uncertain whether the cold had truly passed.
Liora stood at the edge of Nan Theda's garden, a basket at her hip, her fingers smeared with damp soil. She looked older somehow than her nine years, thin, silent, and pale but the sunlight brushed her hair with a golden sheen, and her shoulders no longer drooped quite so low. She was healing, little by little, like the thawing earth.
Nan's garden was a riot of awakening green: parsley, sweetroot, and wild onion pushing up beside fat-bellied dandelions and nettle. The old widow watched her from the doorway, arms folded into the shawl across her chest.
"She's stronger than I thought," Nan murmured to herself. "Stronger than most grown folk, truth be told."
Liora bent to snip early mint leaves and paused to rub the leaf between her fingers, breathing in the scent. Then she moved on to the next patch. She rarely spoke, but she listened. Nan told stories as they worked: tales of river spirits who braided maidens' hair in their sleep, and of lost gods who still whispered in the groves if you left offerings at dusk.
"Do you think they're real?" Nan had asked once, not expecting a reply.
But Liora had nodded.
Father Gerwin, the village priest, visited one afternoon with his arm in a sling and an armful of books. "Got knocked by a cow," he said grimly. "Merciful beast still stepped around me after."
He sat at Nan's table and watched Liora as she sorted dried flowers into little cloth pouches. After some time, he said, "You like stories, girl?"
She nodded again.
He handed her the smallest of the books, a thin, leather-bound book with curling script. "This one's about the saints. Mostly dull, but they mean well."
From that day on, Liora came to the chapel every third afternoon. He taught her to read, slowly, patiently, never pushing when her mind wandered. She especially loved the margins, those little notes scribbled by old monks, full of wonder and curiosity. "Is it true the moon weeps for the earth?" one read. Another said, "The blossom tree grows where souls rest."
She copied that line over and over in the dirt with a stick: The blossom tree grows where souls rest.
The dream came long before her tenth birthday.
The wind howled that night, rattling the shutters, but inside Nan's little home the fire kept them warm. Liora slept wrapped in two quilts with Linna's ribbon tucked beneath her cheek. She hadn't dreamed in weeks, not properly but this time the veil lifted like mist.
In the dream, the world was white, not with snow, but petals. She stood in a clearing bathed in pink light. The grass was soft underfoot. And there, beneath a tree weighed heavy with blossoms, sat Linna.
She looked five still, hair in messy braids, eyes too large for her face. She was humming a nonsense song, plucking petals from her lap and tossing them into the breeze.
When she looked up, she smiled.
"You're slow," Linna said.
Liora choked. "Linna?"
"You were supposed to come earlier. But it's okay."
She rose and took Liora's hand. Her fingers were warm, impossibly warm.
"You have to go now," Linna said, guiding her toward the edge of the glade. "But you won't be alone. Someone's waiting."
Liora tried to cling to her, to memorize her face, but Linna just giggled and pushed her gently away.
"I'll wait by the blossoms," she said, before everything faded to white.
Liora woke with tears drying on her cheeks. Her hand clutched the ribbon tightly, and her chest ached—not with grief this time, but with something else.
Hope.
She rose before Nan woke, washed her face with water so cold it stung, and dressed in her plain brown shift. She placed the ribbon carefully in the small pouch she kept by her heart.
Then she stepped outside. The morning was quiet. The frost had finally retreated, leaving dew-laced grasses and birdsong in its place.
She walked past the rows of garden beds, past the chicken coop, and paused where the fence met the old forest path. That road hadn't been walked in years—not since the last traveler came through with news of wars too far away to touch Meerfeld.
But something pulled at her.
She looked at the trees, just beginning to bloom. Wind stirred her hair.
And deep within her, a seed of something new began to sprout.
She didn't know it yet, but that very road would soon bring her face-to-face with the woman who would change her life.
And so the girl who had lost everything took her first step toward becoming someone chosen.