And for a moment, I feel it.
A pull in my chest. A hum beneath my skin.
Like something’s waking up.
“Amara?” Mother’s voice calls gently from outside, pulling me back.
“Coming,” I say quickly, grabbing my gloves from the hook by the door.
Just like that, I slip back into the rhythm of the day—stepping into the light with the people I love, and the fields waiting.
The sun casts sharp shadows across the field as we return to our places. The soil is looser in the afternoon warmth, soft and pliant beneath my fingers. I drop to my knees beside a row weleft unfinished and dig in with renewed purpose.
I press my palms to the earth and call to the magics inside me. It answers, rising slow and steady. I offer it to the seeds—a gentle nudge, a promise. If the weather holds, they’ll break through the soil by morning.
I examine the work that still needs to be done without apprehension—I find comfort and balance in what might be considered a daunting task.
People say earth is unyielding, but I know better. Earth doesn’t refuse to move—it refuses to fall.
That is the Earth Clan. My clan.
I reach for the short-handled hoe beside me. The wooden grip is worn smooth, the Maker’s Mark—a simple spiral—still etched in the grain. I remember when Father gave it to me, not a gift, but a quiet passing of something earned.
What you shape, shapes you,he said.
I didn’t understand it then—I’m not sure I fully do now. But when I work the land with this tool, something in me settles. Like the world makes more sense when I’m part of its tending.
I glance back at the house, at the stone ledge beside the door where my mother etched our names over the years. Our family’sStonekeep. It’s tradition in the Earth Clan—births, vows, even heartbreaks—all carved into stone.
“The land remembers what we do not,”my mother always says. “So treat it like a witness.”
I remember sitting at the Gathering Table, listening to old stories under the stars—quiet truths passed hand to hand, like seeds in the dark.
The Earth Clan doesn’t rush its wisdom. We let it take root.
One summer night, Lyra and I laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe, mouths full of roasted squash. The air was golden and still—like even the wind was listening.
She stood, bold as ever, and told the story of jumping theravine at Warden’s Edge to impress a hunter boy. She made it halfway; hit the riverbank with a yelp and two scraped knees—but gods, she owned it. Told her story like a triumph, not a fall. Even the stone-faced elders smiled.
When she sat beside me, cheeks pink with laughter, she nudged my shoulder and whispered,“Everyone falls trying to cross something too wide. Doesn’t mean you weren’t meant to try.”
I didn’t think much of it then.
Now, I do.
I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a precipice, something waiting or about to happen. I feel it—a stirring under my skin. A pull in my chest, the hum of the earth where there was only silence before.
Something’s shifting. I don’t know where it leads—or if I’m ready.
That night, I collapse into bed, sore and humming with the scent of turned earth still clinging to my skin even after bathing.
The window is cracked open to let in the cool spring breeze. The sounds of the night drift in—crickets singing in the grass, the soft rustle of trees, the occasional creak of the old barn settling.
Peace.
I curl beneath the old quilt Mother stitched, faded blue and gold, and stare up at the ceiling beams, thoughts racing. My body is heavy from the day’s work, but my mind refuses to settle.
Eventually, I drift off.
