They did not arrive from the sky.
No trumpet-call, no comet-trail. No omen split the dusk.
They arrived like absence—sudden, echoing, unfamiliar.
They were called the Uncarved.
Not because they were blank.
But because no name, no sorrow, no love nor loss had ever touched them.
They were untouched by story.
Uncreased by memory.
And yet, they moved with the bearing of those who once belonged—heads bowed in deference they did not understand, feet careful upon soil that did not yet know them.
The Garden felt them first—not as threat, but as friction.
The breath of the Grove hitched. The roots shifted, tentative. The birds, who had long forgotten fear, went quiet—not fleeing, but listening harder than before.
And when the Uncarved stepped into the Place Between Names, the space did not embrace them.
It paused.
Not to reject.
To reconsider.
---
The Grove's Stirring
Leaves began falling from trees that had never shed. Not in decay—but in thought.
