text: It was the third summer since the war ended and the Cloud had broken, ending the tyranny of a winter that had lasted decades. The warmth on Lauriel’s face lifted her spirits. Her garden was finally returning to an approximation of its former glory; rose bushes breathing color into a space that for so long had been a gray wasteland. Her favorite vine was growing, too, not yet more than a few buds at the base of the lattice she’d put up earlier that week. She would teach it to weave as it grew. A baby’s cry broke through her serenity, and Lauriel smiled; *I must teach you to grow too, little one. You will have a whole new world to weave through.* The pristine click of the garden gate filled the air with something Lauriel ascribed to coziness. She couldn’t say the same for the old street lamp out front. The road it had once faintly illuminated was gone, reclaimed by the earth. A testament to the strength of our makers, she thought as she turned and started to climb the porch stairs. Lauriel didn’t notice the rain as it fell at the base of the lamp post; or the puddle the rain formed as it pooled and ran off an unseen edge. Even as she turned back briefly, on the thought of having heard something peculiar, she did not see it. The rain had by then flickered and vanished; much the same as the light from the bulb above.