Granny Wine & the Visitors: Episode 5 “The Quiet Returns”
If you ain’t started at the start, you’re missin’ half the story.
Catch up with Episode 1 here: Episode 1 - The Fire on the Hill
Granny Wine came out onto the porch, closed the door behind her, and turned her back on the yard.
She set about fussing with the blue-glass bottles lined along the railing—straightening one, nudging another a hair to the left. Hummed low in her throat, taking her time.
Boots moved in the grass.
She didn’t turn.
A voice cut across the yard, friendly and loud enough to be heard.
“Hey, Granny! Good mornin’!”
She turned with a small, genuine smile already forming.
Eli Morris was coming up the path waving, relaxed as Sunday.
A couple of paces behind him came the Sergeant.
Stiff as a fence post. Chin high. Walked like the ground was supposed to square itself up under his boots. His uniform was sharp enough to cut, posture locked in, eyes already scanning past Granny instead of at her.
Behind him, the rest of the soldiers lagged. Not sloppy—just slow. They spread out without meaning to, boots dragging a little, like men who’d already had more than enough strange for one morning and didn’t feel like rushing toward more.
Granny took it all in before her smile even finished forming.
“Well, Eli,” she said, warmth settling in her voice. “Ain’t this nice.”
He laughed. “How you doin’?”
“I’m upright,” she said. “Still counts. How’s the family?”
“Family’s good. Kids are loud.”
“They’re supposed to be.”
He slowed near the bridge, easy as ever. “Sarah wanted me to ask how you liked that apple pie she sent up.”
Granny gave that a moment of thought. “Crust was good.”
Eli nodded solemnly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Nutmeg was just about right.” She adjusted one of the blue-glass bottles along the railing. “Could’ve used a touch more cinnamon.”
“I’ll let her know.”
Behind him, the Sergeant had already stopped pretending patience was part of the plan.
“Sheriff—”
The word snapped out sharp, clipped, meant to cut in.
Granny kept her eyes on Eli.
“Oh,” she said mildly, “Sheriff is it now?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Eli rubbed the back of his neck. “Came down to me and Gordon. And, well—you know Gordon.”
Granny burst out with a hearty chuckle.
The Sergeant’s jaw tightened. Color crept up his neck. He wasn’t being ignored accidentally—he could feel that much.
“I’ve had enough!” he said, loud, with more force than necessary.
Granny still didn’t acknowledge him.
That did it.
He stepped past Eli and headed for the bridge, stiff stride turning into a purposeful march.
Eli saw it and his tone changed instantly. “Sergeant—don’t.”
Grant didn’t slow.
He reached the bridge and stepped onto it.
One step.
Then another.
Eli lunged and grabbed his arm. “Hey—!”
He hauled Grant back hard.
The bridge answered.
A sharp crack split the morning air. A section of planks in the center of the span gave way and dropped out clean, boards tumbling into the ravine below with a hollow clatter.
Not the whole bridge.
Just enough.
Grant stumbled back onto solid ground, breath knocked from him. Fog stirred in the ravine. Blackberry brambles clung thick along the sides, thorned canes scratching at the air.
Granny leaned forward and tapped the lower rail with her cane—not hard, not dramatic, just placed.
The bridge settled. Silence.
Only then did Granny turn and meet Grant’s eyes for the first time.
“Well now,” she said calmly, “that was rude.”
“And who,” she asked politely, “might you be?”
“Sergeant Grant,” he said. “NOXA Task Force.”
Granny gave a small nod, as if she’d been told the forecast.
“Mornin’, Sergeant.”
“We need to ask you some questions about an incident that occurred on this ridge the night before last.”
Granny glanced toward the bridge, then back at him.
“Well,” she said mildly, “bridge’s broke. You’ll have to come down through the ravine and up the other side.”
Grant’s eyes followed her gaze.
The ravine dropped steep and narrow, choked with green. Blackberry brambles crowded the slope, canes arched thick and thorned, heavy with big, ripe berries gone near-black with juice.
Grant hesitated just a beat.
Eli nodded. “Alright.”
They didn’t move in single file.
Each man chose his own way down.
Eli angled off to the left where the ground dipped more gently. He moved slow and careful, easing the canes aside with his forearm, stepping where the leaves were thinnest. A thorn caught his sleeve; he backed out patiently and found another gap.
He reached the bottom with a scratch across one knuckle and dirt on his pant leg. That was all.
Grant went straight in.
He pushed.
The brambles answered immediately. Canes snapped back. Thorns snagged and tore. Somewhere close by, fabric ripped. A berry burst under a hand, sharp and wet, its juice dark against light cloth. One of the soldiers cursed as he forced his way through, branches shaking and leaves tearing as they followed Grant’s lead—shove, rip, tear, forward at all costs.
By the time they reached the bottom, the quiet of the ravine was broken and sticky with crushed fruit.
Eli reached the other side first. He paused, brushed at his jeans, checked the shallow scratch on his knuckle. He glanced back.
The others were still coming through.
He took them in—torn movement, stained hands, the unmistakable signs of having gone the wrong way through a living thing—and very deliberately kept his face neutral. The effort showed only at the corner of his mouth.
Then he turned and headed for the cabin.
Granny Wine was seated at her table when the knock came.
She rose, crossed the room, and opened the door.
Eli stood there, hat in hand.
“Thanks, Granny,” he said quietly.
“You are always welcome,” she replied, stepping aside.
He entered.
Grant followed.
Inside the cabin, the light finished what the ravine had started.
The lighter fabric of Grant’s command uniform told its own story—torn seams, jagged rips, dark purple stains blooming where crushed berries had bled into the tan cloth. Dirt marked his knees and cuffs. Sweat darkened the collar. What had been sharp and imposing now looked handled, unmistakably out of place.
Granny’s eyes scanned him up and down.
Then she turned toward the stove.
“Y’all want a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eli said.
She poured and handed him a mug.
Then she looked at Grant.
“You?”
“No, thank you,” he said flatly. “This isn’t a social visit.”
Granny shrugged and set the coffee pot back where it belonged.
“Suit yourself.”
She carried her own cup to the table and sat.
Then she reached for her pipe.
She packed it slowly, right there in front of them—tobacco brown threaded through with a distinctive light green. She tamped it down with her thumb, unhurried, practiced.
The scent rose gentle but unmistakable—tobacco layered with a greener funk, warm and herbal and just skunky enough to make denial pointless.
Granny struck a match, lit the pipe, and drew once, slow and steady.
Then she leaned back and let the smoke curl out toward Grant—not aimed, not aggressive.
Just present.
And she waited.
The fire crackled low in the hearth.
Pipe smoke hung in the air—right about the height of Grant’s face, softening the edges of him where he stood.
He shifted his weight, jaw tightening, and waved a hand once in front of him like the air had offended.
Granny watched him do it.
Then she drew again—deeper this time—and let the smoke roll out slow and thick.
“Tell me what you saw in the sky the night before last,” Grant said.
Granny took her time.
She puffed once, thoughtful.
“Sky didn’t drop nothin’,” she said. “It opened.”
Grant paused. Just a fraction.
“Opened,” he repeated.
Granny leaned back, gaze drifting past the walls, past the ridge, somewhere the house didn’t reach.
“Like light won its fight with the clouds.
An’ it stayed bright, like it didn’t want to leave yet.”
Grant’s pen hovered, uncertain.
“What time did this occur?” he asked.
Granny puffed again.
“Cain’t say as I pinned it to the clock,” she said. “I was out on my porch, snappin’ beans.”
Grant looked up. “So when?”
She exhaled slow.
“’Bout the time daylight was quittin’,” she said.
“Hadn’t finished sayin’ goodbye yet.”
Grant nodded once, sharp. “So dusk.”
“Put near.”
That was when Eli moved.
He drifted toward the hearth, held his hands out to the warmth, gaze sliding anywhere but in between them.
Grant shot him a look, then back to Granny.
“And after that?”
Granny considered. “After that, things got quiet again. Ridge settled.”
“Did you report this?”
“Report it to who?”
Grant’s patience thinned audibly.
“Authorities.”
Granny blinked. “Well, you’re here now, ain’t you?”
Grant opened his mouth again—
A voice cut across the yard.
“Hey! Sergeant!”
Another, closer now, urgent.
“I see somethin’ out here!”
Boots crossed the porch hard.
The door opened without waiting for an answer.
Granny’s head snapped up.
Her expression shifted—not anger, not surprise—just a sharp, unmistakable look, like somethin’ unpleasant had passed too close to her nose.
“Sergeant,” the soldier said, breath quick. “One of the sentries by the bridge. He says he sees—”
Granny rose to her feet slowly. Cane in one hand, pipe in the other, she crossed toward the door as the soldier finished talking.
The soldier who’d barged in shifted back, realizing too late he was in her way.
Grant moved to step around her.
Didn’t make it.
She was already there, narrow as the doorway itself, and she did not step aside.
Grant stopped, jaw tight.
Eli waited behind them, eyes fixed on a knot in the wall like it held the secrets of the universe.
Granny opened the door.
Morning air spilled in—damp, green, carrying the sound of raised voices stretched thin across distance.
“Hey! Sergeant!”
Another voice, farther off. “I see somethin’ out here. I don’t know what it is.”
Grant was already moving.
“You two stay here,” he snapped, pointing without looking. “You—you—with me.”
The two porch soldiers fell in instantly.
Grant took the steps two at a time and broke into a run around the side of the house.
Eli followed, rolling his eyes like he’d just been drafted into a bad idea, boots crunching after them.
Granny stepped out onto the porch behind them.
She watched their backs disappear around the corner.
Then she started down the steps.
As fast as she could.
It wasn’t much to look at—no sprint, no hurry anyone would clock as panic—but there was intent in it. Cane thudding. Breath working. She cut around the house, gravel shifting under her boots, and by the time she reached the back yard, they were already at the tree line.
Grant didn’t slow.
The woods swallowed them whole.
Inside the trees, light broke apart into slivers. Branches grabbed at sleeves. Leaves slid underfoot like they had their own opinions.
“I see somethin’,” one of the soldiers said. “Just—”
His foot caught.
He pitched forward, arms lifting too late to matter—
And everything stopped.
Not slowed. Not muffled.
Stopped.
The soldier froze mid-fall, body angled wrong, one boot barely touching ground. Grant locked a stride behind him, jaw set, hand half-raised. Eli held between steps, breath caught halfway in.
No wind.
No sound.
The forest held its breath like it was listenin’.
Granny reached the edge of the trees a few minutes later.
She felt it before she saw it—wrongness, like a storm pause that didn’t belong to morning. She stopped short.
“Ah,” she muttered. “Damn it.”
Just inside the tree line, they were frozen solid.
One soldier pitched forward like gravity had made a promise it hadn’t kept. Grant caught mid-command. Eli paused between steps, expression stranded somewhere between concern and disbelief.
Granny bent at the waist, hands on her knees, breath working.
“Well,” she said to nobody in particular, “ain’t that helpful.”
A shimmer rippled deeper in the woods—heat over dirt, the air remembering summer when it was winter.
The Visitors stepped out of it fast, already moving.
Flint crouched and scooped a compact device off the ground where it had rolled, fingers unsteady. “It slipped. I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” Granny cut in. “How long?”
Flint glanced at Laurel.
Laurel answered, clipped and calm. “Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. We can’t be sure.”
Granny straightened. “Then we best get a move on.”
They didn’t waste time.
The shimmer stabilized enough to hold, bending light just enough to keep the ship from making sense to anyone who wasn’t meant to see it. The woods around it felt… agreed with itself. Like it knew to keep quiet.
Granny reached it breathing hard, hand on her knee for a moment while she caught herself.
“Y’all make me hike like I ain’t earned my years yet.”
Then she straightened and got practical.
The redneck toolbox sat where they’d left it, cardboard box scuffed and open, half the guts of their repair day still visible.
Granny shoved it toward Flint with her cane. “Take the rest of that. Just in case things decide to shake loose on the way.”
Flint took it like it mattered. “Thank you.”
Granny turned to Cricket next. She pulled the pipe from her mouth and the small bag from her coat pocket and pressed both into his hands.
“For your nerves,” she said. “Don’t rush it.”
Cricket’s shoulders dropped like somebody had unhooked a weight.
Then Granny reached back into her coat and drew out a green-veined stone.
She didn’t hand it to Laurel right away.
She looked at it first. Then at Laurel.
“This here,” she said, quieter now, “belongs to the ridge.”
She placed it in Laurel’s palm.
“The mountain won’t tangle with you no more,” Granny said. “It knows you now. You carry a piece of it, it’ll let you pass.”
Laurel closed her fingers around the stone. Her gaze met Granny’s—steady, strong, no softness in it, but something that held.
“You’re welcome back,” Granny added.
Laurel inclined her head, deep and deliberate. “We will remember.”
Granny snorted, like she didn’t want the moment to get fancy.
The device was passed to Granny in return—compact, humming unevenly.
“Won’t hold perfect,” Flint said. “But it’ll confuse eyes. Bend time a little.”
Granny weighed it in her hand.
“That’ll do,” she said. “That’ll do just fine.”
The ship powered up without ceremony.
Out beyond the trees, if anyone had been watching—if anyone could’ve looked at the right angle through the wrong morning—it would’ve seemed like heat shimmer. A ripple. A trick of light that never quite became a thing you could point at.
Then even that was gone.
Granny turned back toward the woods, breath already shortening with the thought of the climb.
“Alright,” she said. “I got chores.”
She made it back just in time.
The stillness in the trees cracked like a joint popping.
A soldier hit the ground hard—boots skidding, hands slapping dirt. Grant staggered a half-step. Eli lurched, swore under his breath, shaking his head like the world had shifted under him.
“What are y’all doin’?” Granny’s voice cut through it sharp and close. “Lord—are you alright?”
She was right there. Cane planted. Pipe clenched. Breath rough with effort, but her eyes sharp as ever.
The soldier on the ground blinked up at her. “I—I tripped.”
“Looks like it,” Granny snapped. “You best watch your feet in here.”
Grant spun once, scanning trunks and brush like the trees might confess.
Then his eyes caught the narrow path cutting forward—obvious now that he was looking for it, like it had been there the whole time.
“Come on,” he barked. “Move.”
He didn’t wait for questions to form.
The soldiers fell in by instinct. Eli followed, expression unsettled but already clamping down on it.
Granny stood one beat, watching them surge ahead.
Then she huffed and started after them, slower, muttering. “Whole lotta ruckus. Ain’t nothin’ in these woods worth breakin’ your neck over.”
The path pulled them forward.
Trees thinned.
Light opened wide and clean.
They broke through into open ground—
—and stopped.
Neat rows. Broad green leaves. Dark, worked soil.
Tobacco.
For a long moment, nobody spoke.
Grant’s face tightened. His eyes swept the field, then the tree line, then the ridge beyond, as if the answer might be hiding in plain sight out of spite.
Then procedure snapped in.
“Fan out,” Grant said, sharp. “Check the perimeter.”
The two soldiers moved, splitting left and right between the rows.
Eli stayed still, hat tipped back, squinting at nothing.
Granny came up behind them a moment later, breath still working. She stared at the field, then at the men standing in it like they’d never seen a crop before.
“What in the world are y’all doin’ in my tobacco?” she demanded. “You done lost your minds?”
Grant’s eyes flicked toward her—just long enough to be a look, not long enough to be a conversation.
Before Grant could say whatever he was about to say, boots pounded up behind them.
“Sergeant!”
Reeves came out of the trees at a run, breath sharp, face flushed, radio already half-lifted like he’d been rehearsing the motion.
Grant turned, irritation flaring. “What is it?”
Reeves swallowed and held the handset out. “Command’s calling it in, sir.”
Grant took the radio immediately, thumb on the switch.
“Grant here,” he said. “Go ahead.”
Static cracked. Beneath it, the unmistakable thrum of rotor wash bled through the channel.
“—Task Force Lead, this is Overwatch. We’ve picked up a radar anomaly two ridges west of your position. No transponder. No visual ID. It’s moving.”
Grant’s gaze flicked once—quick, involuntary—toward the woods behind Granny’s cabin.
“Clarify ‘moving,’” he said.
A pause. More rotor noise.
“Erratic vectoring. Speed doesn’t match known aircraft or weather patterns. Command wants eyes immediately. We’ve got a bird inbound—ETA five minutes. LZ at your current location.”
Grant didn’t hesitate.
“Understood,” he said. “We’re redirecting.”
The radio went quiet.
Grant handed it back to Reeves and snapped his head toward his people.
“Fan out. Pack it up. We’re moving west.”
Relief moved through the soldiers like a current, disguised as discipline. Orders echoed. Gear shifted. No one argued.
Granny stood there, cane planted, pipe still in hand.
“What are y’all lookin’ for, anyhow?” she asked mildly.
Grant looked at her then.
Not accusation.
Not gratitude.
Something sharp and unfinished.
He turned away.
They headed back toward the cabin at a brisk pace, rotor noise already growing louder overhead, bending treetops, setting the blue-glass bottles chiming along the porch rail.
Eli slowed just long enough to fall in beside her.
He offered his arm without comment.
Granny took it.
They followed the others across the open ground, her steps steady but worked, cane tapping in counterpoint to his boots. She didn’t hurry. He didn’t urge her. Together they made their own pace through the churned grass.
The helicopter came into view beyond the field—hard angles, loud intent—wind already worrying at the leaves.
Grant glanced back once, clocking the distance, then looked to Eli.
“SUVs are already redirected,” he said. “You want a ride back to town?”
Eli nodded. “Yeah. Appreciate it.”
Granny snorted quietly. “Figures.”
They reached the edge of the field just as the bird dropped lower, rotor wash flattening the rows into ripples of green. Tobacco leaves flashed broad and honest in the light.
Grant didn’t linger.
Orders snapped. Soldiers broke off toward the landing zone.
Eli tipped his hat to Granny before peeling away.
She nodded once in return.
That was enough.
The helicopter came down hard and loud, a brief violence of wind and noise. Soldiers boarded. Grant didn’t look back.
Then it lifted—
trees bowing, dirt spiraling—
and was gone.
Silence rushed back in to take its place.
Granny stood a moment longer, watching the air close behind it.
Then she turned, climbed her porch steps slow and steady, and settled into her rocking chair like she’d never left it.
From her coat pocket she drew out her pipe and another small bag of her mix. Packed it careful. Tamp. Thought about it.
The woods shifted.
Fred stepped out between the trees, crossed the yard without hurry, and dropped beside her chair with a deep, satisfied huff.
Granny lit the pipe.
As she drew, she rested her hand between his ears, fingers sinking into thick fur.
“Good job, Fred,” she said softly.
The bear rumbled, eyes closing.
Granny rocked once, smoke curling into the quiet morning air.
“Now,” she said, content,
“we got our quiet back.”
The ridge settled.
And the mountain went still.
Offer whatever name you wish to be known by at the hearth today — real or imagined — we look forward to welcoming your words into the circle.
