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Cabeswater greeted Gansey and his friends with a shower of autumn leaves. It was a strange feeling, being greeted by a place. Gansey had been to many places, and none of them had greeted him before. Usually, the act of greeting was left to people, and the greeting was stiff and impersonal, a script rehearsed and reused time and again. But Cabeswater greeted him now, sending a shower of golden red leaves that felt like a hug where they brushed his skin.
Leaves settled in his hair and caught in the threads of his bright green shirt. Blue laughed as one fluttered to a stop at the edge of his eyebrow, sticking out like a droopy antenna. She reached up to pick it off. Before her fingers brushed Gansey’s skin, Ronan elbowed Gansey hard enough he jumped and the leaf came loose, joining dozens of others on the mossy ground. Blue’s laughter softened as she gave Ronan a disapproving look that was soon swept away by a smile as more leaves filled the air above them, this time meeting in the center of the clearing and forming the word Salve before scattering off in different directions, like a firework.
“Looks like someone’s in a good mood today,” Adam said, shielding his eyes from the gleam of golden sunlight that fell through the forest canopy.
Ronan grunted in a way that seemed more like agreement than disagreement, trudging past Gansey and Blue, to where Chainsaw was perched by the edge of a small stream, warming her feathers in a patch of sunlight. Noah followed, waving tentatively at the trees and staring up at the sky as if waiting for another show of leaves.
By someone, Gansey assumed Adam meant Cabeswater, but it could be any of them. Cabeswater took their thoughts and moods and reflected them in a way only dreams could. More than that, it seemed to know him in a way normal places and people couldn’t. He wondered if the others felt it too. If they felt that tug on their heart every time they entered, a tug that felt like they were walking into something bigger than themselves, something important, something that mattered. Here, Gansey didn’t have to reach for meaning or answers. He didn’t have to worry about how much time he had left or what he would do with that time. Here, time stood still. He had all the time in the world. Here, with his friends at his side, he felt alive, capable, significant.
He felt something on his head and reached up to find a circle of golden leaves, braided into a crown. He started to take it off, but Blue touched his hand gently.
“Leave it,” she said. “It suits you.”
She drew her hand away. Gansey longed to reach back and take her hand, just for a second or two longer, but she was already moving away. He followed her, joining the others at the side of the stream that trickled over mossy rocks and under exposed tree roots.
He leaned his face towards the sunlight, breathing in the fresh clean Cabeswater air. That breath filled him both with a sense of peace that felt like home, and the thrill of new places to explore. Cabeswater was a mystery, a contradiction. He never knew what he’d get when he stepped inside. But today, after long nights of troubled thoughts and anxious musing, he’d found something he needed: hope.