Chapter 2 | The Little Lion
Footsteps pounded up the hill behind me, quick and too loud. I didn’t need to look. “Lavi,” I said without turning.
Sure enough, his voice followed, breathless with excitement. “Talia!”
“Don’t shout like that,” I said, not pausing in my pruning. “You’ll wake the grapes.”
He skidded to a stop beside me, curls wild, eyes wide and shining. “Big clouds are coming! They’re really dark. Like… like night.”
I lifted my gaze. He wasn’t wrong. The sky had darkened in the span of minutes. The stillness of it pressed on my chest—no birdsong, no hum of insects. Just that watchful silence that always came before a storm. The clouds tumbled unnaturally fast, the heavens themselves seeming restless.
“Go,” I said sharply. “Tell Baruch to check the animals, then get everyone inside and tell them to pray.”
Lavi hesitated, searching my face. “Was it like this the storm you found me?” His voice was small, curious.
I took my eyes off the sky and looked at him, my throat tight. “Yes. But now’s not the time for stories. Do what I say.”
Disappointment flickered across his face. Then he nodded briskly. “Yes, Talia.”
I almost let him go like that. Almost. But the sight of his thin shoulders already turning to run tugged something loose inside me.
“Lavi!”
He spun back, curls bouncing.
“Be careful.”
A grin broke across his face—quick, bright, unguarded—he nodded, and then he was gone, darting down the rows with more energy than sense.
I watched until he disappeared behind the terrace wall, counting my breaths until the tightness in my chest eased. He ran like he trusted the world to make room for him—like he believed it would not suddenly vanish beneath his feet.
I envied that. Storms had taught me otherwise.
I exhaled, steadying myself on the familiar feel of the shears in my hand. It was hard to believe he was still the same boy I had found years ago, huddled and trembling after the storm that stole everything from him.
The memory rose as sharply as the smell of wet earth after rain.
A few drops began to fall now—soft at first, then gathering strength—tapping against the leaves and darkening the dust beneath my feet.
The vines shivered as the breeze turned cool, and the air filled with that same wild scent that had haunted me ever since.
That night, the wind had howled like a living thing.
I had lain awake, listening to the rafters groan, certain the roof would be torn from above me.
When the sun finally clawed its way through, I went out with my blade at my side, heart pounding with dread.
Storms could strip vines bare, flatten fences, scatter livestock.
The vineyard never forgave neglect—not even for one night.
I had braced for loss.
Instead, I found him.
The air still carried the taste of rain—metallic and sharp. Broken branches littered the path, heavy with leaves. The vines sagged under the weight of the storm, their roots drinking from puddles the color of clay. Each step sank into mud. The world felt hollow, muffled, waiting.
I remember scanning the rows, counting posts, searching for damage, expecting ruin. Then I heard a faint, uneven sound. Not the cry of an animal. Smaller. Human.
I followed it toward the edge of the vineyard, past a fence half-fallen and an olive tree bent low from the wind.
He was crouched beneath its twisted arms, so small I nearly missed him. Mud streaked his cheeks, his tunic torn. He looked more shadow than boy, his knees drawn tight to his chest, eyes wide with the kind of fear that leaves no sound behind it. His lips were blue.
At first, I thought he was a lamb gone astray. Then he lifted his face, and those dark eyes fixed on mine.
I remember crouching, keeping my voice low, as if speaking too loud might spook him. “Where is your family, little one?”
He only shook his head.
When I asked his name, he said it softly—Lavi.
“Well then,” I told him, brushing the mud from his hair, “aren’t you a brave little lion?”
It suited him somehow—small, trembling, yet fierce enough to endure when the storm had tried to swallow him whole.
I searched for days after that. Walked the roads, asked in the market, even hiked down into the ravine where the storm waters had torn through. Nothing. No one.
Days turned into weeks. Weeks into seasons. His feet grew surer on the paths, his hands less likely to tremble when thunder rolled. The questions faded slowly—not because he stopped asking them, but because he learned when not to.
The boy clung to me with quiet desperation, but each morning he woke with the same stubborn hope: Maybe they’ll come today. Maybe they just lost me in the storm, and they’ll come back for me.
I let him believe it. Perhaps I even believed it for a while. But seasons passed, and the boy grew, and still… no one came.
He never stopped searching. Even now, some part of him still peers down every road, scanning every crowd—believing the storm only misplaced him, trusting the world to one day return what it took.
And I—foolish or tenderhearted, I don’t know which—never told him otherwise.
The vineyard had weathered that storm. So had we.
I turned from the fields before the rain deepened. There was always more to mend, more to keep standing. But storms, at least, had the decency to make the work pause—to grant a rest I would never take on my own.
And then the storm would pass. And the work would be waiting.