Sam steps beneath the bare branches, breath rising in slow silver threads. He reaches up, fingers brushing the fruit’s smooth skin, then stops. A sparrow flickers nearby. Beyond the fence a crow answers, low and knowing.

The cider barrels are full. He doesn’t need this apple.

He remembers the years when grief hollowed him—a house closed tight, the orchard gone wild. How the trees, stubborn and alive, kept blooming anyway. How they lured him back with their quiet insistence: prune, gather, taste. Each season a whispered lesson that sorrow isn’t the end of the story.

Sam lowers his hand. The apple belongs to the air now. To the birds, the wind, the ancestors who wander between worlds when the veil thins.

“Some sweetness for the unseen,” he murmurs, almost a prayer.

He turns toward the house. Behind him, the last apple sways like a lantern, a small red heart beating against the gray.