Six-fifteen. The alarm hasn't gone off yet, but Petunia is already there — a mountain of black fur settled on the worn linoleum just beyond the back door. She doesn't scratch. Doesn't whine. Just waits, her massive head resting on her paws, her soulful brown eyes fixed on the handle. Bob finds her like that every morning. He pads across the cold floor in bare feet, still rubbing sleep from his hazel eyes, his brown hair a mess under the baseball cap he grabbed before leaving his room. He doesn't say a word. He just reaches down and rests his palm on Petunia's head. Her tail thumps once against the floorboards. The door swings open. The orchard air rushes in — cool, carrying the damp smell of dew on grass and the distant hum of something that might be a truck on the highway or might be something else entirely. Petunia steps onto the porch first, her thick black coat catching the first amber rays of sunrise. Bob follows, his olive-green sweatshirt pulled tight against the morning chill. They stand there together, boy and dog, at the edge of the property where the grass gives way to the treeline. Nothing moves. But Bob has learned to trust the stillness. He's learned that Petunia's silence is not emptiness — it's attention. She's listening to frequencies he can't hear, reading patterns in the light that haven't yet resolved into shapes. This morning, her ears swivel. Just a fraction of a degree. Toward the old oak at the far corner of the field. Bob's heart quickens, but he doesn't speak. He waits. She'll tell him when it's time. The future is not a line. It's a geometry of trust. And every morning, Petunia draws the first coordinates.