Morning arrived over the Intervale without any visible sign that anything had changed.
Birds sang in the same unhurried patterns they had sung the day before. Mist drifted low across the terraced fields, catching the early light the way it always did.
The gardener knelt among his flowers with the same unhurried attention, tending them as though yesterday had ended like every other day in a life that had clearly seen a great many of them.
And yet everyone felt it.
Sarya walked through the Garden in the early hours and found the flowers still responding to her presence the way they always had, the streams still carrying their faint glow beneath the surface of the water. Nothing had been damaged. Nothing had visibly shifted.
