The Glass Orchard

The orchard woke before the city did. Frost climbed the glass branches in slow spirals, each crystal leaf holding a memory someone had forgotten on purpose.

Mira stood at the gate with empty baskets and heavier doubts. She had come to harvest the season's first truth, though truth in the Glass Orchard never arrived whole. It arrived in shards, sweet and dangerous, and you chose which pieces to swallow.

A bell rang somewhere beneath the roots. The trees answered with a sound like distant laughter. Mira stepped inside, and the world rearranged itself around her name.