First Light

She woke with the first light, a pale line drawn under the door of the longhouse. Sleep fell away from her in an instant, replaced by a sharp, clear memory of the seeds. She rose in the quiet and pulled her shawl around her shoulders against the chill. She slipped out into the cold dawn, her bare feet noiseless on the hard-packed earth, and knelt by the small, rectangular bed at the edge of the woods.

She leaned closer, her eyes scanning the dark, freshly worked soil. There was no sign of green, not even the palest flicker of a new shoot breaking through the earth. A small, quick impatience rose in her, a wish to see the shoots right now. But she pushed it down, remembering Nyra’s words about the slow work of the seeds, happening unseen in the dark ground.

The longhouse door opened and closed softly. A few moments later, Nyra was there, kneeling beside her in the cool, early light. Her eyes moved from the dark bed to the girl’s face, and her face was gentle. “I thought I might find you here,” she said.

“This is a good way to care for them,” Nyra said, her voice a low murmur in the quiet of the morning. “To watch over them like this. And it may be that your eyes are the first to see the green, when they are ready to break through the soil.”

She settled back on her heels, and Nyra did the same, a companionable ease in the watch they kept together. The grey of dawn was slowly giving way to a softer, warmer glow, the first touch of the rising sun. She was content to wait, to watch the day grow and warm the ground, holding in her heart a quiet hope for what the buried seeds would one day become.