The moon garden did not care that she was sitting in it.
That was the thing about gardens at this hour — they extended no sympathy and no judgment, they simply continued being what they were, which was green and quiet and indifferent to the specific quality of pain that a person brought into them. The water feature moved. The night insects did their small consistent work. The moon above was the same moon it had been two hours ago when everything was different and it had not adjusted its brightness to account for what had changed since.
Elara sat on the stone bench with her knees pulled up and the diary in her lap and Kaelis's words moving through her the way words moved through you when they had been said by someone whose words had weight — not leaving, not fading, just circling.
*Keep quiet. Not another word. Not one more word from your mouth tonight.*
