"Mostly waiting for the rain to stop," Peter shouted over his shoulder. "Come on, nearly at the crown. The giant's getting restless."

We reached the summit—the "Twimp"—where the ancient Iron Age hillfort rose like a man-made pimple on the head of the mountain. We sat on the short, wind-swept grass, the Ebbu Valley laid out beneath us like a model village, the silver thread of the river glinting through the haze.

Peter poured the tea into plastic cups, the steam whipped away instantly by the wind. He settled back against a stone, his eyes glazing over with that specific look he got when he was about to dive into the deep end of a local legend.

"You know what you're sitting on, don't you?" he asked, gesturing to the mound. "This isn't just a pile of dirt. This is folklore made flesh. Or stone."

I winked at her. "Here we go. Bran the Blessed?"

"Bran the Blessed," Peter confirmed, ignoring my smirk. He was a nerd for the Mabinogion in a way that only a man who spent his evenings in a quiet Welsh cottage could be. "The giant King of Britain. They say his head is buried under the Tower of London to protect the kingdom, but his spirit? His heart? That's in places like this. He was so big he could wade across the Irish Sea, but he was wise enough to know that a leader should be a bridge. A fo ben, bid bont—he who would be a leader, let him be a bridge."

She was quiet, her fingers tracing the grass. I watched her, wondering which of her were listening to Peter's story. The "bridge" metaphor felt uncomfortably close to home. I looked south, past the docks of Newport, toward the Severn. Somewhere over that water was the life I was supposed to return, the expectations of a family that didn't know about the "glass garden" dreams.

"I like him," she said softly. "The giant who became a bridge. It sounds like a lot of work, though. Being the thing everyone walks on. But maybe that's the point—maybe being strong enough to let people cross you is its own kind of power. Like... you're choosing to be the pathway instead of the wall."

Monday arrived with a cold, insistent drizzle that turned the slate roofs of Crosskeys into dark mirrors. I walked her to the bus stop, our shared umbrella huddling us into a small, private world of nylon and rain-scent. We didn't talk much; she was focused on her first-year Gwent College assignments, her fingers tapping a nervous rhythm on her bag.

I watched the bus pull away, a yellow-and-white box disappearing into the mist, and I felt a sudden, sharp pang of displacement.