After the Harvest in Spanish

A New Year

By: Wolfgang Ausserbauer

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Long before dawn touched the Vineyard, before the first bird stirred or the frost began to loosen its grip on the soil, the land remembered. Not the storm. Not the breach. Not even the shard.
It remembered something older.
Deep beneath Normandy, where the roots twisted into ancient knots and the soil held memories older than the Anunnaki, a faint pulse traveled through the Earth. It moved slowly, like a thought forming in the dark, brushing against the deep-rooted network that connected the estates.
The Wolf estate felt it first. A tremor. A whisper. A question.
The bond between the two lands quivered, sending a soft ripple through the stones of the old archway. The Wolf estate answered with a low hum — cautious, steady, protective.
Normandy responded with a sigh, weary but alive.
The pulse continued downward, slipping into the forgotten layers beneath the vineyards, where the roots grew thick as cables and glowed faintly with the last traces of the storm’s energy.
There, in the deepest hollow, something shifted.
Not the Khal‑Shar. Not the Anunnaki. Not Fabienne’s brother. Something older.
A presence that had watched the breach from the other side of the deep roots.
A presence that had felt the shard awaken. A presence that had recognized the estates’ pulse — the heartbeat of a world the Anunnaki had shaped but never fully tamed.
It stirred now, testing the boundary. The roots recoiled. The soil tightened. The land held its breath. The presence whispered — not in words, but in intention. ---Soon.
Above, in the quiet farmhouse, Fabienne turned in her sleep, brow furrowing. DocWolf shifted beside her, sensing the tremor through the bond even in dreams. Writer lifted his head from his blanket, ears twitching. Nyx’s tail flicked once, sharply.
The pulse faded. The presence withdrew. The Vineyard settled.
But the memory of the whisper lingered — a thin thread of unease woven into the roots, waiting for morning.
Waiting for the guardians to wake. Waiting for the next move.