"I like to think that that was a final gift to us from Julia," she said, although she had absolutely no way of knowing if that was so.

Perhaps she had a poet's heart too.

Ariadne crossed the room, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood floor, as she made her way over to a table that was littered with dried cuttings and seeds and cups of different soil samples she'd collected from around Trench and from her orchard. She waved him over. "Here's the table where I've been working on native plants. They hardy, but they don't have a lot of nutritional value."