The Grey Patch
By the third day, you have a routine, and the routine has a problem.
Mornings, you do farm chores at double speed. Afternoons, you sit with Sera — she's strong enough now to stand at the cellar window with her nose in the sun, telling you about her world: the Dawn Herd singing up the sun, the sky-roads, a fox she once knew who charged tolls. Evenings, you walk the fence line and measure the grey.
That's the problem. You measure it with fence posts, and every evening it has swallowed another one. Grass, then the wild roses, then the old stump the meadowlarks liked. Everything inside the patch still exists — it just stops mattering. Grey grass doesn't bend in wind. Grey roses don't smell. When a meadowlark lands on the grey stump now, it doesn't sing. It just sits, and after a while, flies somewhere else, confused.
“It's her,” Sera says quietly from the window. “Vespera's grey. It came off her wolves like mud off boots, and now it's growing. That's what she does, Madison. That's what she'll do to everything, in both our worlds, once she has the Pearl. Not burn it. Just… stop it counting.”
You are absolutely not going to let the meadowlarks stop counting.