Part One: “The Orchard of Memory | Desire Lines
DL - There is a place not marked on any map.
A valley wrapped in mist, where time moves differently.
And in that valley, there stands an orchard.
Each tree there grows from a single memory.
Some bloom with joy.
Some bend under the weight of heartbreak.
Some are hollow, waiting for the one who forgot.
And it is Arlen who tends to them all.
He walks the orchard each morning before dawn, fingers brushing leaves like pages in an unwritten book. He knows the trees by heart. The tree that laughs when the wind passes. The tree that cries at night. The one that hums lullabies in languages lost.
But there is one tree he never touches.
A tall, quiet one with silver-veined leaves and blossoms that never fall.
It is her tree.
He doesn’t speak her name. Not anymore.
The orchard remembers for him.
On the eve of the Mist Blooming, the time of year when memories buried deep rise again, something changes.
A stranger stumbles through the orchard gates.
A woman, barefoot, breathless, with a broken ribbon in her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, though no one asked.
“I don’t know how I got here. I don’t remember... who I am.”
Arlen freezes. There is something in the way she stands, in the tilt of her voice, in the ache of her silence.
A memory not yet returned.
He steps forward.
“You’re not the first to come here like this,” he says gently. “But the orchard only calls those it once knew.”
The woman blinks. “So you think… I’ve been here before?”
“I don’t think,” Arlen replies.
“I remember.”
That night, under the glow of trees that shimmer with old light, he offers her a place to rest.
Not in the house.
But beneath the very tree he never dares approach.
She lies beneath its branches, unaware of the ache in Arlen’s chest.
And the tree blooms for the first time in years.
To be continued...
Next: “The Woman Without Past”