Chapter 244: Green Shoots

Talyra Prideclaw walked into the yard pulling a narrow handcart loaded with bare-root saplings. She had not imported ornamental greenhouse breeds from a southern city. The cart held local mountain pine, sturdy alder, and cold-hardy birch wrapped in damp burlap.

The Festival of Renewal’s planting tradition gave Elian immediate, profound anxiety.

People wanted to plant things in the ground to mark the changing season. People also possessed a catastrophic inability to anticipate where roots would go, where structures currently sat, or where future foundations needed to be dug.

Elian walked off the porch and found three southern travelers driving a heavy iron spade into the mud directly beside the Steaming Annex.

"No," Elian said.

The man holding the shovel stopped. He looked offended. "The planting is a Rite of Renewal. The tree is sacred."

"The drainage pipe is copper," Elian replied. "Move."

Talyra stepped up beside Elian. The Lion Kin envoy looked at the shallow hole the traveler had started. She shook her head. "The runoff from the heated roof will scald the needles in winter. The tree will die."

They looked at each other. Talyra cared deeply about root space, soil composition, and canopy clearance. Elian cared deeply about buried infrastructure, masonry foundations, and wagon clearance. They shared the exact same uncompromising requirements for spatial planning.

They rapidly became terrifying together.

Elian and Talyra spent the next hour marking the Oaken Hearth’s perimeter. They drove wooden stakes into the ground to establish approved planting areas: the outer road edge, the uphill erosion zones, the bare patch of damaged ground near the old runoff cut, and the designated shade ring near the future grazing rest.

They strictly forbade shovels near the water pipes, the cellar foundations, the animal turn lanes, the perimeter firebreak, and the major route sightlines.

Tavi marched toward the stables carrying a thin, leafless sapling. The boy stopped in front of the paddock fence and prepared to dig.

Barnaby pushed his head over the top rail and inspected the twigs. It was a juvenile apple tree.

Elian looked at Bram. The logger held his hands up and refused all responsibility. Elian looked at the Copy Desk on the porch. Heda refused to look back, confirming she was absolutely responsible.

Barnaby snorted, enthusiastically supporting the planting plan.

"A young apple tree will not produce fruit for quite some time," Elian explained to the mule. "You are looking at years before a harvest."

Barnaby stared at him. The mule’s flat, unblinking gaze clearly communicated that management suffered from a catastrophic lack of long-term vision.

They compromised. The apple sapling was planted fifteen feet away from the paddock fence, entirely out of reach of an extended equine neck, but perfectly visible from the stall window. Barnaby watched every single shovelful of soil drop over the roots.

Across the yard, Vaelia carried a sturdy mountain pine toward the north approach. She did not gather a crowd or deliver a memorial speech about the Vanguard. She simply drove her shovel into the cold earth along the tree line, carving out a deep, even hole.

Rylia stood near the porch, watching in silence.

Sif walked over to the freshly dug hole. She held the pine sapling upright by the trunk. Vaelia shoveled the dirt back in. Heda jogged over and used her boots to tamp the loose soil down firmly around the base. The three generations of the pack line stood together in the mud, completing the labor without anyone needing to name what they were doing.

Marris Fen stood near the perimeter fence, awkwardly holding a borrowed iron spade. He looked down at the mud on his boots, then looked toward the kitchen door.

"Does festival planting count as scheduled work time?" Marris asked.

Bruna walked past him carrying a bucket of ash for the compost bay. "You are holding a shovel."

Marris considered the tool in his hands. "Fair."

By evening, the yard was a churned mess of wet clay and fresh mulch. The muddy travelers retreated inside, crowding the common room and the wash stations.

Elian checked the evening dipstick Sseka had left on the bar. The Hearth had burned through far more water than the daily projection. The heavy washing, cooking, and drinking had dropped the cistern to its lower limit. Tomorrow evening brought the Greenfire Vigil, the peak of the festival, which would draw even more traffic from the surrounding camps.

Elian did not wait for Bruna to demand action. He walked to the main valve behind the bar, engaged the iron wheel, and quietly cut the feed to the washroom taps to begin rebuilding the reserve.

Outside in the freezing dark, Barnaby stood perfectly still beside the paddock fence, staring at his tiny apple tree.