One day when Luke was tending to the auras in Susan’s magic seashell garden, baby Susie had gone out the cat-door, continued past the now restored carrots and was playing in the dirt just past the pole beans. “What is it you are chewing on?” asked Luke taking a moment out of tending to auras. Let me see there. He poked around in Susie’s mouth for moment and found a small stone just perfect for choking on. Baby Susie had found it some where in the garden and had immediately put in her mouth. Luke turned the stone over to look at it before he tossed it away. He was surprised. “Oh it’s a piece of a Rune Stone.” “I wonder what a broken Rune Stone is doing in the garden?” It was most of the letter “K” or Kuan. It symbolizes knowledge and inspiration and also fever or a frenzy. As with most runes, it had that dual nature. Luke wondered if the whole rune meant all that or had some essential part been broken off or maybe he should consider the remaining portion.
The giant pumpkin seeds Susan had bought at the fair last year had grown and grown and grown and fortunately had chosen to grow through the chain link fence and were now over-growing the yard. Their aura’s were vigorous enough on their own without Little Luke’s help
That’s a lovely continuation—you’ve got the same tone you’ve been weaving with Susan, Luke, and the magical garden. Here’s a way you might expand this scene, while keeping the present-tense storytelling and the sense of wonder:
Little Luke wipes the dirt from the tiny shard and holds it up to the morning light. The fractured rune gleams faintly, as if remembering the power it once carried. “Kuan,” he murmurs, the word rolling off his tongue like a secret half-remembered. Susie giggles, delighted simply to have Luke’s attention, and claps her small hands together.
Susan, hearing the fuss from the kitchen window, leans out with her apron still dusted in flour. “What trouble are the two of you in now?” she calls, half amused, half concerned.
Luke shows her the shard. “It’s not just a stone. It’s part of a Rune. Broken—though still humming with something. I wonder how it found its way into the beans and carrots?”
Susan comes down the path, brushing her hands on her apron. She peers at it, her brow furrowing. “Knowledge and frenzy, both? That doesn’t sound like the best thing to leave lying about for Susie to chew on.” She reaches to take it, but Luke tucks it quickly into the pocket of his blue coveralls.
“It may be dangerous,” he says softly, “but sometimes broken things hold truths whole things hide.” He looks back at the sprawling pumpkin vines, their orange bulk pressing against the fence as if trying to push beyond. “The garden has a way of giving us mysteries exactly when we need them.”
Baby Susie, oblivious to the weight of the discovery, has already found a snail shell to wave triumphantly in the air. Susan sighs with fond exasperation, scoops her up, and says, “Well, whatever meaning that rune carries, let’s hope it doesn’t keep me up all night baking pumpkin pies for the entire neighborhood.”
Luke smiles but keeps his hand on the rune in his pocket, feeling its faint warmth. Some part of him already knows this will not be the last time its broken whisper crosses their path.
Little Luke lingers with the broken rune long after Susan has gone back inside. The faint glow of the shard seems to tug northward, as though whispering of unfinished meaning. Beyond Susan’s fence and the pumpkin vines sprawls the beginning of the land ridge locals call the Three Mile Wood.
The Wood has always been there — older than the farms, older than the town itself. A spine of granite worn smooth by glaciers, with narrow deer paths threading through towering pines. People hike it now and again, but nobody has ever lived on it, worked it, or cut it down. It is as if the ridge refused all attempts at change, choosing simply to be.
Luke knows enough about auras to recognize when something in the land has been left untouched for reasons deeper than chance. The rune shard humming in his pocket feels aligned with that mystery.
That evening, as twilight gathers and the first bats circle above the pumpkin patch, he tells Susan:
“We’ll need to walk into the Wood. The rune isn’t finished telling us its story.”
Susan frowns, balancing baby Susie on her hip. “The Three Mile Wood? That place has always been… peculiar. I’ve never even dared to hike past the first ridge.”
“Precisely,” Luke answers, adjusting the strap of his satchel. “It has waited. Just as this shard has waited.”
And so it begins: a journey north, into the untouched granite trails, with Susan, Luke, and Susie stepping into a place that time has left untouched — carrying a fragment of a broken rune that might yet reveal why the Wood has endured, unchanged, forever.
The morning mist clings low to the yard when Susan fastens Susie snugly into her woven sling. The baby gurgles, content with the rhythm of her mother’s heartbeat. Luke, already at the garden gate, pats the pocket where the broken rune rests. It feels warmer today, as if eager to be carried north.
The path into the Wood begins just beyond the overgrown pumpkins, where the chain-link fence ends and a faint deer trail rises toward the ridge. Granite bedrock shows through the soil in slabs, smoothed and scarred from glaciers long gone. Pines rise close together, their needles muffling the sound of the world behind them.
Susan hesitates at the threshold. “It’s always so still here. No birdsong, no chatter. Just… quiet.”
Luke nods, adjusting his blue coveralls. “The Wood keeps its own counsel.” He kneels to touch the stone underfoot. “And today, it speaks through this.” He lifts the shard for her to see. The rune glows faintly, the fractured line of “Kuan” seeming to shimmer against the morning light.
They begin walking. The trail winds upward, granite ridges alternating with dips where rainwater gathers into mossy pools. Occasionally the trees open just enough to reveal views of Susan’s cottage below, the garden like a patchwork quilt in the distance.
Baby Susie wriggles suddenly, reaching outward, her tiny hand pointing toward a gnarled pine ahead. At its base lies a scatter of stones unlike the rest—angular, weathered differently, as if placed rather than formed.
Luke approaches carefully. The rune in his pocket hums in answer. He crouches and lifts one of the stones. Sure enough, another carving—another rune, this time more intact. A curving mark, shaped like an M.
“Mannaz,” he breathes. “It speaks of humankind… but also of mirrors, of self and other.”
Susan leans over his shoulder, uneasy. “It looks like someone meant for us to find it. But who?”
The silence of the Wood deepens, as though waiting for their next step.
The three of them huddle under the shallow rock overhang, rain tapping steadily on the granite above. The air smells of wet pine needles, fresh and sharp, as rivulets run down the stone and drip in small steady beats onto the trail beyond their feet. The shelter is barely wide enough for them—Susan keeping baby Susan close against her, and Little Luke pressed tight at the edge, his coveralls already darkened where the spray reaches.
Susan sighs with that half-amused, half-exasperated tone only parents know. “Why are babies always chewing on things they shouldn’t?” She gently pries open baby Susan’s hand, then her mouth. Out comes another bit of stone—flat, gray, yet etched with faint lines. Luke leans forward, taking it with a cautious squint.
“It’s not just a stone,” he says quietly. “Look—this is runic.”
The shard is jagged on one side, but one arm of a character remains visible. Luke frowns, rubbing at the surface to bring out the mark. “Younger Futhark,” he recalls slowly. “The FE rune… wealth. Or cattle, depending on how far back you go.” He hesitates, memory tugging. “Strange—it’s broken. One of the arms is missing.”
Susan kneels lower, brushing away pine needles and loose gravel. To her surprise, the ground is dotted with fragments. Tiny shards glint in the dim light, each carrying a half-mark, a sliver of a curve, the shadow of a rune.
“There are dozens,” she whispers. “But no whole ones. Just pieces.”
Luke nods gravely. “A mystery greater than the storm. Someone—or something—did not want these Runes whole.” His amphibian eyes gleam, reflecting the watery light. “Runes hold power in their completeness. A broken rune is like a voice cut in half, a word stolen before it can be spoken.”
The rain slackens, but neither Susan nor Luke moves to leave. Instead, they sit quietly, letting the baby gnaw harmlessly on a smooth pine cone while they study the scatter of rune shards at their feet.
Luke presses the FE shard to his palm. “Wealth, broken. What does that mean for us? And if the ground is littered with fragments, then somewhere nearby lies the reason none remain whole.”
Susan looks toward the misty ridge where the trail climbs deeper into the Three Mile Wood. “Maybe this storm was meant to slow us here, to make us see.”
Baby Susan gurgles happily, unbothered, as if she knows more than either of them.
The rain tapers off into a mist, the storm drifting east across the hills. Drops still cling to pine needles and sparkle faintly in the returning light. Susan gathers up baby Susan, snug in her shawl, while Little Luke pockets the shard marked with the broken FE.
They step out from the overhang and back onto the Three Mile Trail. The ground, newly washed, shows the runes more clearly now—tiny fragments catching in the shallow rivulets that run down the slope. Luke crouches, webbed fingers tracing their path.
“See here,” he says, his voice low. “They wash downhill. The storm reveals what was hidden. If we follow the water, we follow the trail.”
The three move slowly, careful on the slick granite. Baby Susan, perched on Susan’s hip, reaches for the beads of rain on branches, giggling when they fall onto her hands. Every few yards another shard appears—some no bigger than a fingernail, others palm-sized, all jagged and incomplete. None whole.
The trail bends and narrows where boulders choke the ridge. A low cut in the granite opens, almost like a dry stream bed, now carrying the rain’s trickle. Luke pauses, his eyes narrowing. “They’re collecting here. Like bones in a gully.”
Susan kneels to look. The shallow groove is littered with rune shards, more than they’ve seen yet—half-curves, broken staves, split crossbars. Together they seem like the scattered pages of a book torn to pieces.
Luke runs a finger along one, whispering the half-formed names: uruz… thurisaz… fehu… ansuz. Each incomplete, each unable to hold its meaning.
“The mystery deepens,” Susan says. “Why are there so many—and why broken?”
Baby Susan wriggles, pointing further down the cut. Her tiny hand gestures insistently. Following her gaze, they see it: a faint glow deeper in the gully, just visible in the shadow of the ridge.
Luke’s throat tightens. “Something waits there. Something that wanted these runes silenced.”
They exchange a look. The trail of fragments has become a summons.
The Guardian
The three of them press deeper into the gully, the trail of rune shards crunching faintly beneath their steps. The glow flickers just ahead, not bright like a flame but pale and pulsing, as though seeping from the stones themselves. The mist hangs low here, curling between rocks and tree roots, muffling even the birds.
Baby Susan is oddly calm now, her eyes wide and shining as she stares at the light. She does not fuss, does not squirm—she simply watches.
At the bend, the gully widens into a shallow bowl of granite. And there, standing in the half-light, is the Guardian.
It is tall but not immense, cloaked in something that seems woven from rain and pine shadow. Its form shifts subtly, like mist given shape, yet its face—or what passes for one—is carved of rune-stone, cracked and scarred. In its surface are deep grooves where runes once burned whole, but now only fragments remain. One side bears the mark of FE, split down its arm exactly as Luke had found.
The Guardian does not move forward. It waits, silent, as though it has stood there for centuries. When it speaks, the sound is like water over stone:
“Whole no more. Broken, scattered. The word is lost, and with it the bond.”
Luke stiffens, instinctively stepping in front of Susan and the baby. “The runes are shattered across the trail. Who broke them?”
The Guardian tilts its rune-etched face, cracks glowing faintly. “Time. Betrayal. Hands that sought power without cost. The runes could not remain whole once torn from their purpose.”
Susan feels Baby Susan stir, the child’s small hand reaching toward the Guardian with no fear. The glow brightens around her, as though the shards in the gully hum in answer to the baby’s presence.
Luke whispers, almost to himself: “She draws them… the fragments. Like iron to a lodestone.”
The Guardian lowers its voice, resonant and mournful. “If she is to bear their weight, you must walk where the runes were first sundered. Only there may they be spoken whole again.”
The mist thickens, and the glow fades to a single faint glimmer upon the trail ahead.
Susan swallows, adjusting the baby on her hip. “Then the path is clear,” she says. “We follow where it leads.”
The Guardian inclines its stone-carved head in silent acknowledgment, then dissolves back into the mist—leaving behind only the hum of broken runes, and the uneasy knowledge that their journey has only just begun.