AVERY’S NOTE: March pretends it’s an ending.
Longer days. Softer light. The suggestion that things are about to get easier.
That’s the lie.
Because the worst nights don’t arrive in the middle of winter.
They arrive right when you think you’ve made it through.
The trouble with March is that it pretends to be an ending.
The days get longer.
The calendar insists winter is almost done.
People start using words like “soon” and “eventually” again, as if optimism is something you can schedule.
Alderwatch does not believe the calendar.
That night, winter tightened instead of loosening.
Cold settled into the town with a kind of weary determination.
The snow hadn’t fallen fresh in days, but it lingered anyway. Gray at the edges. Compacted into ridges that refused to melt out of spite.
The sky hung low. Heavy. Unmoving. Trapping darkness close to the ground.
The café lights glowed warm against the street, a defiant pocket of yellow in the gloom.
Inside, the air smelled like coffee and scorched sugar, and the faint metallic tang of machines pushed past comfort.
The hum had been wrong all day.
Not louder.
Not sharper.
Just… insistent.
By dusk, I could feel it in my teeth.
I stood behind the counter, hands braced against the wood, listening to the espresso machine hiss and steam and pretend nothing unusual was happening.
Outside, people moved through the square faster than usual. Heads down. Shoulders hunched. Like the town itself was something to get past rather than exist inside.
Birdie leaned against the pastry case; eyes shadowed with exhaustion.
“This feels like the night before a storm.”
Felix didn’t look up. “It’s not a storm.”
“Then what is it?”
He hesitated.
“A stress fracture.”
That answer sat badly in my chest.
