A week later the territory no longer feels entirely like it belongs to anyone else.
It responds.
Not loudly and not violently, but in subtle shifts that begin small and grow impossible to ignore as crops bloom unnaturally where I walk and the earth warms faintly beneath my boots as if it recognizes something that has finally returned.
The first time it happens, I pretend it is coincidence.
I step into the southern fields to clear my head, and the wheat nearest to me straightens visibly as if brushed by invisible fingers while buds that should not bloom for another month unfurl in slow quiet defiance of season.
By the third day, coincidence feels like denial.
Territory boundaries shift slightly without command, not in dramatic landslides but in subtle movements that ripple through the
