I. The Garden
He found the garden by accident.
It was the kind of place that did not announce itself, tucked behind the long wall at the edge of the school grounds, reachable only through a narrow gap between two overgrown hedges. He had been walking with no destination in mind, the way boys sometimes do when the weight of a school day sits too heavily on their shoulders, and then the gap appeared, and he stepped through it, and there it was.
Flowers he could not name. Tall grass swaying without a wind. And butterflies, more than he had ever seen gathered in one place, drifting in slow, unhurried arcs above the petals as though they had all the time in the world.
He stood at the edge of it, blinking.
That was when he saw her.
She was sitting on a low stone near the center of the garden, her school uniform neat despite the wild greenery all around her, her short dark hair framing a face so still it might have been painted. She was watching a butterfly that had landed on her knee, and she wore an expression he could not quite place, something between wonder and a sadness so old it had already made peace with itself.
He must have made a sound. She looked up.
Her smile, when it came, arrived slowly,like light easing over a hill at dawn.
“Are you lost?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said honestly.
She nodded at that, as if it were the right answer. She moved to one side of the stone, making room. And because he could think of no reason not to, he crossed through the flowers and sat beside her.
Her name was Nabi.
