Chapter 152: Visitors - Leah
They come through the tree.
The first is small. Green, like the seed that started it all. It emerges from the trunk like stepping through a doorway, shaking leaf-like appendages and shedding golden pollen that evaporates before touching the ground.
"Hello," it says. Its voice is wind through willows. "We are from C-side."
Adrian steps forward. "Welcome."
Ophelia adds, "We've been waiting."
The green creature—plant? being? spirit?—regards the twins with what I can only describe as affection. "You planted the seed. You sang the song. The bridge is open."
More follow. Not many. A dozen, perhaps. Each different. Some humanoid. Others purely botanical. One is a floating sphere of water containing a miniature ecosystem.
They bring gifts.
Fruit that tastes of memories—when I bite one, I taste my mother's cooking from childhood, the meals she made before she left. Kael tastes something different: his father's sword-oil, the scent of the northern fortress where he trained.
The twins taste cake. Chocolate. With candles.
Their eyes widen.
"How?" Ophelia asks.
The green creature smiles—an odd expression on a face made of bark. "The fruit shows what you love. What you would share."
Xiao Qi documents everything. Measurements, observations, hypotheses. "C-side operates on entirely different physical laws. The fact that they can exist here, in our reality, means the tree is doing more than bridging space. It's translating existence."
"Poetry," Xiao Ba murmurs beside her.
"What?"
"You're describing poetry, sister. The translation of one reality into another."
Xiao Qi stares at her. Then laughs. "Maybe I am."
The celebration lasts through the night. Campfires. Music—C-side's sounds like rainfall on different surfaces, rhythmic and melodic simultaneously. Food from all three worlds mixed together.
Kael holds Adrian in one arm, Ophelia in the other. His wings are fully regenerated now, dark red catching the firelight. Mine spread behind us, silver-white, creating a canopy for our family.
"We did this," I say to him.
"We started it. They're finishing it."
He looks at our children. At the green visitors. At the tree that grows between worlds.
"Imperfect," he says.
"But real," I finish.
Together.
Always.