She vanished...

She vanished just as the year ended.

No one saw her leave, but they all felt her absence—the way the wind no longer carried whispers of laughter, the way the earth seemed to hold its breath in her wake. Nomvula, the Greeninglady, had always danced in the garden at dawn, her bare feet tracing patterns into the soil, weaving light and energy into the earth. But on the morning of the new year, her footprints were gone.