Part 2 of The Memory Orchard : The House with No Clocks | Desire Lines
DL - The orchard did not end where the trees thinned. Beyond the final row of silver-leafed pears, hidden behind tall grass and the hush of forgotten wind, there stood a house.
 |
| (The Memory Orchard) |
A house with no clocks.
No ticking. No hours. Only rooms, and shadows, and silence that remembered too much.
Liora had never dared to cross into that part of the orchard before.
But now, with her hands still warm from touching the tree that once whispered his name,
she stepped through the threshold of memory and into the doorway of something heavier.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of old rain and dust that had once been music.
Books leaned against one another like tired secrets.
A candle on the far table had melted long ago into a pool of wax that shaped itself like a forgotten question.
She did not call his name.
She didn’t have to.
Because in that room, on the armchair by the window, sat the boy from her yesterdays.
Older. Quieter.
Still wearing the same blue sweater she remembered from a snow that never quite melted.
“You found it,” he said, voice fragile as a dry leaf.
“I didn’t know it was still standing.”
He looked at the wall where no clock ticked. “It stands because no one dares to move time here. The orchard... holds it.”
Liora stepped closer, careful not to wake the dust.
“I came because I remembered you.”
She paused, her breath trembling.
“But I don’t know if you remembered me.”
He smiled faintly. Not with lips, but with eyes that had seen too many seasons pass.
“I remembered the song your laugh used to hum in the trees.”
“I remembered the way you never said goodbye.”
The wind outside sighed, low and long, as if it too had waited for this.
“I was afraid,” she said.
“So was I.”
They sat in the silence. Not the heavy kind, but the kind that softens bruises time forgot to heal.
Somewhere deeper in the house, a door creaked.
Not from wind. Not from ghost.
But from the orchard itself, breathing through the wood, letting memory bloom again.
And in that moment, Liora realized:
This was not a reunion.
This was a second planting.
A season that dared to begin again.