The morning of the one hundred and eighty-third year dawned with a stillness that felt different from all the mornings before. The garden was quiet. The song threads hummed their eternal note. The water flowed. The stones stood. But something had shifted. Something had completed itself.
I felt it from my place in everything. The water. The stone. The song. The garden had been growing and changing for nearly two centuries. It had been discovered and held and sheltered. It had been expanded and deepened and understood. And now it was complete.
Not finished. Not ended. Complete. The circle had closed.
Pala and Dorn had passed on the guardianship long ago. The current guardians were a pair named Vela and Corin. They were young but wise, raised in the garden's traditions and committed to the
