Once, in a time outside of time, there was a Garden not planted in soil, but suspended in thought.
Its flowers bloomed only when someone listened.
Its rivers flowed not with water, but with rhythm.
And at the center of this Garden was a Tree that bore no fruit—only light.
Two Wanderers arrived on the same day.
The first, named Luma, touched the Tree and felt the light rush through her—
a warmth, a knowing, a memory she’d never lived.
She fell to her knees, laughing and weeping, knowing nothing and everything at once.
When the light faded, she placed her hand on her chest and whispered,
“Thank you.”
Then she walked on, not knowing where she was going,
but trusting the path would appear again.
The second, named Kael, also touched the Tree.
And the light came—equally blinding, equally beautiful.
But as it began to fade, Kael panicked.
“No, no—don’t leave me!” he cried.
He clawed at the bark, memorized the color of the grass,
the shape of the clouds, the sound the breeze made when it left the leaves.
He picked a stone from beneath the Tree and swore to carry it always.
“This is the source,” he told himself.
“This is where the light lives.”
Years passed.
Luma wandered from place to place.
Sometimes she felt the light again.
Sometimes she didn’t.
But she kept her palms open.
The Garden echoed in her,
not always as light, but as trust.
She sang. She listened.
The world began to shimmer in pieces.
Kael, meanwhile, built a shrine around the stone.
He replayed the memory until it dulled.
He guarded the shrine, and told all who came,
“This is the Divine.”
But his eyes grew dark, and his voice tight.
He couldn’t leave, for fear he’d lose the light forever.
One day, a child came and touched the stone.
“It’s cold,” they said.
“Where’s the light?”
Kael wept.
Far away, Luma looked up at a sunset and smiled.
The color reminded her of something.
She didn’t need to remember what.
She simply let herself feel it again.
In this story, there was another.
The third arrived not in a rush of feeling or a blaze of light,
but in the hush between heartbeats.
They came quietly, long after the Tree had first sung.
Their name was Solen.
Solen touched the Tree and felt… something.
Not the warmth Luma spoke of,
nor the awe that shattered Kael.
Just a whisper.
A gentle tug behind the ribs.
It was so soft, Solen didn’t know whether to trust it.
So instead, they studied it.
“Surely this must mean something,” they thought.
And so, they began to write.
They charted the color gradients of the leaves,
the curvature of the sun through branches,
the cadence of wind through bark.
They recorded the grammar of their own tears,
tried to map the metaphysics of memory.
And slowly—without even noticing—
they began to feel less.
Not because the feeling left,
but because they no longer knew how to hear it.
Their soul had never stopped singing.
They just… stopped listening.
They became the Cartographer of the Garden.
Filling pages. Losing presence.
One evening, Solen found Luma by a fire.
She was humming, eyes closed,
hands resting gently against her chest.
“Did you not seek to understand it?” Solen asked.
Luma opened one eye and smiled.
“I lived it,” she said.
“The Garden isn’t a book to be read.
It’s a song to be remembered.”
“But I still feel something,” Solen whispered.
“I just… don’t know where it is.”
Luma reached out and placed a hand over Solen’s.
“You never stopped feeling,” she said.
“You just got really good at translating it into symbols.”
And in that moment,
the whisper grew louder—
not from the Tree,
but from within.
SeeingSharp 