The Twilight Orchard

The orchard wasn't found on any map.

It never had been. It appeared once a month, on the final night of the waning moon before giving into blackness, when the air grew thick and the stars seemed crammed against one another in the vast sky.

Ardin had found it by accident, or so he told himself. One moment, he was following the usual hunter's path near Ragne near the blackwoods, but the next, he was standing before irregular aisles making dozens of rows of mirror barked trees bearing an orb of fruit that shimmered like blown glass.

There was no wind whispering through the branches. No birdsong to accompany him nor bugs to sing their late night lullabies in the early autumn frost. Just the soft crackle of reality seeming to bend and sway like the limbs of an old willow tree.

Each tree bore a singular fruit near the center of the trunk, hovering in the center of it attached to nothing. When Ardin reached for one out of bemusement- or perhaps the hunger that gnawed at him- he felt it warble much like a heartbeat.

Biting into it was like cracking through a soft shelled crustacean with your teeth. The fruit was warm. Wet. It tasted like the dew on freshly cut grasses, copper, and... Something else. Something less tangible. A memory.

Someone else's memory.

He stood in a meager sunlit kitchen that had seen as many years as it had love stored in the many colored pieces of pottery holding herbs, culinary ingredients, and fresh produce. His hands were covered in a white powder as the sound of laughter turned his attention to a little feline frean boy and girl no bigger than seven. They worked hard beside him, turning to him as their eyes would light up as the little chefs showed off how thoroughly they kneaded the dough. Ardin didn't know them. He didn't know them and yet his chest ached like he had missed them every day of his life.

Then he was back again. Ardin was standing alone in the orchard, among the stars, in the dark of night.

Ardin fled. He fled and didn't mention a word of it for weeks.

But then he couldn't resist the pull, and came back.

Once.

Then again.

He tasted lives he had never lived. Snippets of grief, joy, success, and share of failures. A sky pirate's final voyage as the explosions of cannon fire stole his last vision of Porte Del'airion in the endless storm. A dancer's final curtain call as she took her bow with toes outstretched to perfection. The quiet peace of a baker opening her shutters to allow first light into her bakehouse first thing in the morning.

Then, on one of his later visits, he found a new sprout all alone in the rows of trees.

Just one, not yet with any fruit. Just leaves shaped in disproportionate lengths that seemed less flushed out compared to the other trees.

However, as he grew closer, he saw a name shaped in the center of the tree. It had clearly not been made with any blade or tool, but rather, formed into the bark of the little tree as if it had always been there. Ardin.