The mountain knows things before the people on its slopes do.

It knew when the old house stopped sitting empty. It knew when the girl across the hollow noticed. It knew, the way old land always knows, that something had shifted in the dark between the trees — and that nothing rooted on either side of it would grow the same come autumn.

She’s nineteen. Copper-haired. Hedge-witch to her marrow, raised by her grandmother and the garden and the particular wisdom of things that bloom in the dark. She’s curious where she should be careful. She follows the night when it calls her into the wood.

He’s older than these mountains and considerably more patient. He came here with a purpose. He stayed for a scent on the wind — vanilla and green magic — that reached him through walls he’d spent centuries perfecting.

He didn’t court her. He didn’t ask.

He waited. The way a predator waits. The way old things wait — certain of the ending, unbothered by the time between.

The phlox bloomed on his side of the hollow that summer.

The land always knows first.