He had been talking for some time now, and his voice rose and fell with the kind of conviction only men like him could muster. I let him.
“So what do you think?” He shifted the carved wooden token in his hands. “You spend more time out here than any of us, Falen. You get it. You feel it, right?”
“And what is it I’m supposed to feel?”
Randy grinned, eager, mistaking my amusement for encouragement. “The pull of something greater. The rhythm of the land, the changing of the seasons, the energy that ties us all together.” He gestured to the people around us, though most of them weren’t paying him any mind. “We’re all part of it, whether we realize it or not.”
“That much is true.”
His chest puffed up. “Exactly. And that’s why we need to honor the equinox. The Green Man isn’t just a symbol, you know. He’s real.”
I raised a brow. “Is he?”
Randy nodded. “Of course. He’s the cycle itself, the living embodiment of nature’s wild balance. And when we call him, when we open ourselves to him, he answers.”
I watched him, considering. “Has he answered you?”
Randy hesitated just long enough to make it clear the answer was no. “Well—not yet. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? People don’t believe anymore. They don’t listen. But I do. I try.”
His sincerity struck a nerve.
It wasn’t his fault. Mortals have always wanted to reach for something beyond themselves, to grasp at the unseen and give it a name. I had met men like him before, in ages past, wearing different clothes, speaking different words, all of them asking the same thing—to be seen.
I almost pitied him. Not because he called to the Green Man, but because he didn’t realize the Green Man was already before him.
I let the silence stretch between us, just long enough for Randy’s certainty to falter, just long enough for him to start filling the space with another explanation—
And then I felt it.
Not the forest, nor the shifting of spring in my bones.
Her.
Samantha came toward me, moving through the gathering with focus in her stride and a look of great purpose on her face. I didn’t let my gaze linger too long, but something in me stirred all the same.
Randy, unaware, launched into another declaration about the importance of energy and intention, but I wasn’t listening anymore. Samantha stepped between Randy and me, all tangled emotion and expectation.
“Back so soon?” I teased. “I must’ve made an impression.”
She crossed her arms. “Don’t look so smug about it.”
I smiled, slow and knowing. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She huffed, but there was no real bite to it.
Then, before I could say anything else, she launched into something entirely unexpected. “I know what you’re thinking.” Oh, I sincerely doubted that. “I don’t belong out here. And you’re right—I don’t. But I do belong somewhere, and that somewhere just happens to involve a lot of people who really know how to ruin a moment.” She glared at Randy, who didn’t notice.
“I design green spaces,” she continued. “Urban planning, landscape integration, sustainability. Actual sustainability, not just a couple of potted plants on a rooftop to make a corporation feel better about itself. It’s about balance—like making space for nature where people won’t just trample over it the second they want to build another parking lot.”
Her hands moved as she spoke, shaping the air like she was drafting a blueprint in real time.
“I work with developers, which—believe me, I know—is frustrating, but it’s necessary. If I don’t do it, someone else will, and they won’t care about how their plans disrupt the watershed or drive out pollinators or cut people off from natural spaces entirely. And it matters, you know? It matters. Because if people don’t see nature—if they don’t touch it or even feel its presence in their lives—they stop thinking about it as something worth preserving. It becomes an abstraction instead of a reality.”
She paused, breath hitching, then pressed on.
“I’m not blind to what I’m up against. I know I’m actually working with the same people responsible for tearing things down. And I know that sometimes, even when I fight, I still lose. I still watch something beautiful get paved over. But if I don’t fight at all, then there’s nothing left. So yeah, I took that call. I answered that text. I put out the fire my boss was setting…because I give a damn.”
Her breath came sharp at the end as her shoulders rose and fell with the force of her own convictions.
