Together

The last of the sun’s light had bled from the sky, leaving the garden in the soft, gray light of dusk. The man’s question, his first words, still hung in the air between them, a fragile and precious thing. The woman did not look at him, her gaze still on the small, green shoots that pushed up from the dark earth.

“They will be safe,” she said, her voice as quiet as the evening. “We are here. We will tend them. Together.” It was a simple statement, a plain truth, but it was everything. It was a promise. It was the first stitch in the mending of a world.

The man was silent for a long time after that. But it was a different kind of silence. Not the vast, empty silence of before, but a quiet, shared peace. A beginning.