CHAPTER 148: CH-148: THE FIRST LEAF

The first frost came early.

It crept in one morning, not with cruelty, but with purpose—silvering the leaves, quieting the crickets, and covering the orchard in a hush. The Dream Tree shimmered under the pale light, its blossoms dimmer, yet still glowing faintly, like coals nestled in ash.

Meiyu felt the change in her bones.

She walked the outer paths now, her steps slower, her staff a necessary companion. Children ran past her sometimes, carrying baskets of windfruit or whispering riddles to the bark of old trees. She would smile, nod, and carry on, her ears tuned to the subtle shifts in the song of the orchard.

There was a tension—not ominous, but urgent.

The orchard had weathered seasons, storms, even sorrow. But something deeper stirred beneath the roots.

Not all songs were meant to lull. Some were meant to awaken.

That night, Meiyu sat by the Waygate, watching the shimmer of its passage. The chimes above it—a newer addition, carved from stone and bone—moved soundlessly in the still air. She sipped tea brewed from amber leaves, her eyes scanning the stars for a sign.

It came not from the sky, but the ground.

A soft tremor, like a heartbeat.

And then, a voice.

Or perhaps a memory.

"Tend well the peace, for even peace must adapt."

It was Tian Shen’s voice, unmistakable, not echoing from beyond, but from within.

Meiyu did not weep. She had wept all her tears in younger seasons.

She simply rose.

Tomorrow, she would call a gathering.

...

The orchard’s central clearing had grown wide over the years, ringed by saplings that now stood as tall as sentinels. The Dream Tree stood at its heart, its roots thick as rivers, its branches bending like arms in prayer.

There, the stewards gathered.

They came from all corners of the orchard—and beyond. Some wore the robes of monks, others the patchwork of travelers. Many bore marks of other lands: sand-worn boots, frostbitten scarves, a dialect shaped by distant winds.

Meiyu stood at the base of the Dream Tree, her voice clear despite the cold.

"The orchard speaks," she said. "And what it says is this: peace is not stillness. It is not silence. It is not the absence of trouble. Peace is motion. It is choice. It is... courage."

The crowd listened, rapt.

"There is a deep stirring beneath the earth. Not a threat. A beckoning."

She raised her staff, which had once belonged to Tian Shen. The wood gleamed with oils from decades of hands.

"The Waygate has shown us how to reach out. Now, the orchard asks us to go further. Not to carry our peace outward—but to return peace to places that have forgotten their own."

Murmurs stirred. Not of dissent, but of understanding.

A young man stepped forward. Jin, barely twenty, but sharp-eyed and keen-hearted. "Will it be like before? With seeds and stories?"

Meiyu smiled. "Yes. But also with roots. This time, we do not scatter. We settle."

She pointed east, where the mountains lay shrouded in mist. "There are places calling out for remembrance. Forgotten valleys. Scarred lands. Abandoned shrines. We will find them. And we will listen."

A silence fell.

And then, like birds startled into flight, dozens of voices rose in agreement.

They would go.

...

The first group departed before dawn.

Jin led them: five stewards carrying satchels of soil, stones engraved with runes, bundles of cuttings wrapped in cloth. At the edge of the orchard, they turned back once.

The Dream Tree pulsed faintly, as if nodding.

The wind carried a scent of mint and plum blossom.

And then they vanished into the fog.

Meiyu watched until they were gone, then turned back toward the Dream Tree. She touched its trunk gently.

"You knew," she whispered.

The bark beneath her hand was warm.

...

Days passed, then weeks.

Letters returned, carried by hawks and spirits of the wind. Stories written in verse and pressed onto pressed bark or cloth.

We found a shrine swallowed by briars. We lit a lantern, and the thorns wept dew.

The valley of ashes now sings. We built a wind altar, and it hummed before dawn.

Children here have never heard birdsong. We played the flute you sent. Now they dance with sparrows.

The orchard swelled with joy.

But not all news was light.

There is a place that resists us. The land is angry. Our seeds do not take.

We found bones buried under a red tree. The air tastes bitter here.

We dream of fire, Meiyu. We wake to smoke.

The orchard trembled.

One night, Meiyu dreamed of Tian Shen again.

But this time, he was not beneath the Dream Tree.

He stood in a broken place—gray stone cliffs and ash-coated soil. His hand rested on the hilt of a blade not drawn in decades.

"They need a gardener," he said. "But some gardens require fire before bloom."

Meiyu woke with the taste of charcoal in her mouth.

...

A new group formed.

This one older. Wiser. Less idealistic.

They carried not only seeds, but shovels, salves, and scrolls of old rites. Among them was a blind woman who could read the wind by touch, and a young boy who never spoke but dreamed in maps.

Meiyu did not go with them.

Her place was here.

But she gave them Tian Shen’s staff.

And a single instruction:

"Listen, even when it hurts."

...

Winter deepened.

The orchard slept, but not all the way.

In its dreams, it hummed.

The Dream Tree shed a blossom that glowed brighter than the others. It fell not to the earth, but drifted outward—through the Waygate, beyond the hills, into the unseen places where fire had yet to become ash.

Meiyu, sensing the bloom’s departure, whispered a blessing.

May it take root.

...

One morning, the earth groaned softly.

Meiyu hurried to the Hearttree.

A group had returned.

Their faces were tired. Their cloaks scorched. One limped with a bandaged leg. But their eyes shone.

"We found it," the blind woman said. "The place where the orchard must grow next."

She handed Meiyu a stone.

It was cracked, but within the break bloomed a tiny sprout, green and defiant.

Meiyu held it close.

She said nothing.

But her tears watered the stone.

...

That spring, a new sapling was planted at the orchard’s eastern edge.

Unlike the others, it did not hum at first.

Its bark was gray. Its leaves stubborn.

But every morning, a child came to sit beside it. The boy who dreamed in maps. He said nothing. Just traced lines in the dirt, whispering to the roots.

After forty days, the sapling sang.

Not the same song as the Dream Tree.

It sang in broken chords. In dissonance. But also in defiant harmony.

The orchard listened.

And replied.

...

The world tilted once again.

Machines crept closer. Smoke marred skies. Old empires stirred in new skins.

But the stewards endured.

They did not fight.

They planted.

In boardrooms, one left a bowl of mint before a crucial vote. In cities, murals bloomed on walls, painted with berry juice and ash. In schools, children shared windfruit at lunch and whispered lullabies learned from trees.

Peace moved quietly.

And it held.

...

One evening, as dusk painted the sky in streaks of indigo and rose, Meiyu sat once more beneath the Dream Tree.

The new sapling beside it had grown taller, its bark now a dark silver threaded with green. It hummed more steadily these days, in a voice that had learned to sing through sorrow.

Across the orchard, lanterns flickered to life. Children ran with ribbons tied to sticks, laughing as they chased fireflies.

Elder stewards watched from porches, sipping tea and humming along to the song in the roots. The orchard was not the same as it had been in Tian Shen’s time.

And that was the point.

Meiyu ran a hand across the surface of the Dream Tree, now rough with age but warm as ever.

Her fingers paused over a small knot in the wood—a spot Tian Shen had once carved with a word no longer spoken aloud, only remembered.

"Tomorrow," she murmured to the tree, "we plant again."

The wind answered, rustling through the leaves in a gentle chord.

That night, the Waygate shimmered brighter than it had in years. The stars above seemed to lean closer, listening. And beneath the soil, where roots and dreams danced together, something stirred—not an ending, nor a beginning.

But a turning came up.

For peace, like a tree, does not grow in straight lines.

It twists. It leans. It breaks and heals.

And always, it reaches.

So the orchard reached—with song, with silence, with open hands—and the world, scarred and scattered though it was, began to reach back.

And far to the east, in a valley where the red trees once wept fire, a new sprout cracked the earth.

Its first leaf unfurled, leaving it’s tree.

With it came the new wisdom, new era, new Bullsh*t and new f*ckery.