The Garden Within

Darkness held Seren—not like an embrace, but like forgetting. Each breath (or was she breathing?) scattered like dust in a vast nothing. Time moved around her—or through her—leaving only the faintest trace of what had been.

Before the garden, before the forgetting, there was a hospital room. The beeping of a monitor, slow and steady. Fingers tightening—then slipping—from hers. A name—hers—spoken with urgency. Then, silence.

A sensation flickered—a thread slipping loose, delicate and uncertain. Fragments surfaced: a voice calling her name, the sharp scent of antiseptic, the weight of absence pressing in. She reached for them—or thought she did—but her form felt hollow, like the echo of something that had been.

Then, she fell.

The descent was silent, endless.

Until it wasn’t.

She landed softly, moss rising to meet her bare feet. The coolness pressed into her skin, grounding her, real. Light crept into the edges of the void, unfurling in shimmering waves, alive with quiet rhythm.

A garden emerged, breathing around her. Petals trembled at her presence. Leaves brushed against each other in hushed conversation. The air carried the scent of damp earth and something sweeter, elusive, just beyond naming.

At its center, a pool of water lay impossibly still, its surface brimming with reflected starlight, each star a memory she couldn’t quite grasp.

Seren exhaled, breath uneven. “Where am I?”

She turned.

A woman stood nearby, silver hair catching the garden’s light like woven moonlight. Her eyes were dark and endless as the pool at twilight, holding something vast and ancient. Her moss-colored dress seemed to grow from her form rather than cover it, the fabric curling like ivy, stitched by roots.

Seren’s pulse quickened. “Who are you?”

The woman’s hands moved like water over stone, each gesture measured and sure. “I am the Gardener.” Her voice carried the weight of soil after rain. “I tend, but I do not create. The garden is yours, Seren. It has always been.”

Seren frowned. “Mine? I don’t understand.”

The Gardener studied her with the stillness of countless seasons. “A refuge. A mirror. A place to breathe, to remember, to be.” She touched a nearby flower, its petals brightening beneath her fingers. “But it will remain yours only as long as you tend to it.”

Seren’s gaze drifted across the garden, its edges flickering between existence and shadow. The stars in the pool shifted, rearranging themselves like scattered thoughts. Was this a gift? A trap? She wasn’t sure.

The garden became her haven.

Whenever she stepped into its embrace, the weight she carried lifted. Time softened here, dissolving like mist in morning light. She came without thinking, drawn by the hush of leaves, the cool press of moss, the stillness wrapping around her like a held breath.

But peace was not permanence.

It began with a single flower, its petals curling inward, color draining into shadow as though the light had bled away. Then a tree’s leaves quivered, their edges crisping gray, like pages left too long in sun.

Each visit, the garden shrank. The air turned sharp, biting at her skin. The moss beneath her feet disintegrated like old paper, dissolving between her fingers when she tried to hold onto it. The scent of damp earth soured, edged with rot.

The pool, once serene, rippled. Its stars dimmed and scattered, something stirring beneath its surface, disturbing more than water.

Seren’s stomach clenched. “What’s happening?”

The Gardener stood at the water’s edge, soil-streaked hands at her sides. Her presence remained unchanged—but the garden around her withered like a breath being released.

“The garden reflects you, Seren.” Her voice was even as stone. “It thrives when you care for it—and for yourself. But you’ve been using it to hide, not to tend.”

Seren pressed her palm against the bark of a tree. It splintered under her touch. Her breath hitched. “How do I fix it?”

The Gardener’s gaze was steady. “You already know.”

One day, Seren reached for the garden—

And felt nothing.

No soft moss, no hush of leaves. Just the void, pressing in—thick, airless, absolute. The taste of nothingness on her tongue.

She pressed forward, but there was no path, no air, no ground beneath her feet.

Only absence.

“Please.” Her voice unraveled, thin as thread.

The void pressed closer, suffocating, coiling around her ribs like remembering how to drown.

Then—

A voice pierced through.

“Vitals unstable. She’s fading.”

Another, sharper: “Try again. We’re losing her.”

The words fractured the silence like ice breaking. Seren stumbled back, pulse wild against emptiness.

The garden was gone. The void swallowed everything.

No.

She squeezed her eyes shut. The garden wasn’t gone—it couldn’t be. Not while she remembered its shape, its breath, its weight.

She pulled it back—stone by stone, petal by petal. Not just through memory, but through need. Through the quiet certainty of choosing.

Moss beneath her feet, soft and cool. The hum of the trees, familiar. The pool, shimmering with scattered stars that pulsed in time with her fading heartbeat.

Her hands cupped the water. Its coolness steadied her, proved she was still here. Still choosing. Still alive.

She poured it over the roots of a withered tree. Her movements careful. Deliberate. Each drop a decision to remain.

Not just for the garden.

Not just for herself.

For the hands that had held hers, the voices that had called her name.

For the life she had almost let go.

The silence wavered.

A hum stirred at the edges, like the first notes of dawn.

The garden trembled, flickering at the edges. The stars in the pool pulsed once—then faded.

A presence shifted beside her. Seren turned—but the Gardener was already fading, dissolving like morning mist. Only her voice remained, woven into the wind:

“You already knew.”

Light shattered the darkness, searing through her closed eyes.

A rush of air clawed its way into her lungs, her chest convulsing under the weight of return. Noise crashed in—sharp, clinical, too loud. The scent of antiseptic burned at the back of her throat.

“She’s waking.”

The voice carried relief that felt like morning.

Seren turned her head, throat raw, limbs heavy as stone. A woman leaned over her, eyes searching, a quiet smile hovering at the edges of certainty.

“Welcome back.”

Seren parted her lips, voice rasping through disuse. “The garden…”

The woman frowned, just slightly. “Garden?”

Seren let her eyes drift closed. Her fingers curled against the fabric of the hospital sheet, pressing lightly over her chest where something familiar hummed beneath skin and bone.

It was still there.

Not the garden itself, but its rhythm—patient and steady, woven into the quiet space between heartbeats.

Her breath slowed, settling into this new pattern of being.

She wasn’t lost. Not anymore.

A single star pulsed behind her eyes—steady as a promise kept.