The world ended softly.

No sirens, no fire —

only a long breath held too long,

and then silence.

Ash settled where rain used to fall.

Buildings became bones.

Names slipped from memory like dry petals in wind.

And yet —

he still comes.

You find him beneath the peach trees.

They should not exist.

Nothing should, not here, not now.

But they bloom.

Every spring — if this can still be called spring —

the trees along the hill unfold their pinks,

their gentle whites, their sighs of life

where life has no right to be.

And he stands among them like something remembered by the earth itself.

You don’t know his name.

Or maybe you did once, long ago, when the rivers still sang.

All you know is that when he smiles, the sky seems to blush —

as if recalling what warmth felt like.

His fur is sun-drenched bronze, touched by soot and time.

His robes are patched, dirt-worn, but he wears them like royalty.

He speaks little. Sometimes not at all.

But his eyes carry stories your bones want to believe.

You sit beside him.

He offers you a peach.

It is warm from his hand —

still firm, still fragrant, impossibly real.

You eat in silence,

and the world, for a moment, does not feel broken.

“Why do the trees still bloom?” you ask, voice barely a ripple.

He looks up. A single blossom brushes his cheek.

“Maybe they remember,” he says, not quite to you, “what we forgot.”

The wind moves through the orchard.

Petals spiral around you both like snowfall in a sweeter season.

And you think:

If there is anything sacred left in the ruins,

it lives here —

in the way he looks at the sky,

in the way the trees listen.

𖦹 The world ended.

But spring still returns to him.