The Star Orchard

The outer gate stands open just enough to admit a person at a time, as though the orchard is deciding who may be trusted with its threshold.

You take the path toward the sound of approaching footsteps. Lantern light trembles along the white stone walls, and the trees beyond them gather into deeper shadow, their branches threaded with a faint, patient silver. The air is sweet with sap and something sharper beneath it, like rain on metal. Every bud you passed on the way in seems to have brightened since the star fell, as if the whole orchard has inhaled.

At the gate, you find Lady Seraphine’s steward first: a thin man in green with a ledger clutched to his chest and worry already seated between his brows. Beside him stands a pilgrim in a travel-stained cloak, hood down despite the chill. He is young enough to have some softness left in his face, but old enough for the road to have taught him how to hold still. A satchel hangs at his side, stuffed with papers and ink, and a string of small bells is tied at his wrist where he can hear them only when he moves.

He bows when he sees you, not deep, but carefully respectful. “I am Brother Aurel,” he says, voice quiet as fallen leaves. “I came to witness the bloom, if I am permitted. I only mean to record what the orchard reveals. The stars have been restless for weeks. It would be a disservice not to notice.”

The steward looks between you and the pilgrim, then past both of you toward the dark line of trees. “He has papers,” he mutters, as if papers might settle the matter of prophecy. “And a recommendation from the chapel at Eastmere. Lady Seraphine said to admit the duly sanctioned. That is what I am trying to do.”

Aurel’s gaze lifts to the orchard walls, and for a moment his expression turns so open it is almost reverent. “It is more beautiful than the songs said,” he murmurs. “More guarded, too.”

From somewhere beyond the gate, inside the orchard itself, a branch shifts with a sound like a soft footstep. The steward hears it and stiffens. Seraphine’s voice drifts from deeper within, crisp and carrying: “If our visitor is to remain, then let us begin properly. The paths must be shown. The boundaries must be understood.”

The orchard, for all its silence, feels suddenly crowded with expectation.

The bloom is still hours away, perhaps less. The first star has already fallen. And now the night has begun to deliver its pilgrims, one by one.

Do you take Brother Aurel in, question him more closely, or turn to reinforce the gate before anyone else arrives?