My senses tingled and I began to walk more quickly. I told myself I was only passing the time in this strange dream until Iwoke. But the longer I wandered, the more I felt as if something in this garden was calling to me, waiting and watching.
He followed silently. I could sense him behind me, hear the faint shuffle of his cloak brushing the path as he matched my pace, though he stayed a few steps back. “Do you always study gardens this intently?” he asked.
“Only the ones that feel like they’re hiding something.” The fact that a figment of my own imagination desired to conceal something from me was just the sort of mystery that would pass the time until I finally awoke.
I turned down a path that shimmered oddly in the light, colors bending in the corners of my eyes. Somewhere ahead, a flicker of red bloomed like a heartbeat. I was no longer sure if I wanted to wake up—or if I was meant to find something first.
The thorns reached higher than I could see, their shadows pooling unnaturally where light should have fallen. Rather than the sun warming the garden, there was only a soft golden glow that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, like candlelight trapped inside a dream.
My footsteps left no trace; each step felt strangely weightless as they brushed the mossy cobblestones without a sound. Yet the petals I brushed with my fingertips trembled, as if responding to my presence.
Behind me, the soft footsteps followed, a quiet guide in this strange realm. Silence stretched between us, as if the garden itself were holding its breath, waiting for something to happen…or for someone to find the right key.
I paused at a crossroads, waiting for the next breadcrumb to guide me to my unknown destination. As if in response, something tugged at the edge of my senses—faint as a whisper, warm as a half-remembered name. I followed it without knowing why, answering the same siren’s call I did for the secrets I made it my living to acquire.
I paused at a rose caught mid-bloom, its edges silvered as though kissed by frost, though the air felt more like a summer evening than the bite of winter. Curious, I leaned closer. Inside the petals, nestled like a secret, was a glimmer of a memory, beckoning my touch that would unfold its contents.
My fingertips caressed it, but it seemed to withdraw, as if afraid to reveal the story it harbored. I frowned. That had never happened before, further confirmation that however real this place felt, I was no longer in the waking world.
“There’s something strange about this place,” I murmured, more to myself than to him. “It feels like a forgotten memory. This place…it isn’t just a dream, is it?”
My companion didn’t answer. I turned to find him watching me—not with suspicion, but something quieter, almost wondering, as if not quite sure what to make of my presence.
“Does it feel like one to you, or do you only wish it were?” He tilted his head. “Why are you studying a rose that hasn’t yet bloomed?”
“There’s something hidden here.”
His gaze settled on the rose he’d been tending and his expression softened, touched with something like reverence. I recognized that look—it was the same one I wore when I brushed against an object full of stories, of secrets only I could hear.
He turned and knelt beside the thorned bush growing wild and misshapen from cracked stone. Its gnarled, ancient branches twisted in unnatural shapes, the withered blooms choked with brambles. Some of its blooms had withered entirely; others clung on stubbornly, half-open, curling brown at the edges.
He moved carefully, like someone tending a wound, not pruning so much as comforting. “I don’t know why I keep doing this,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “It alwayslooks the same. No matter how much care I give it, it never fully blooms.”
I stepped closer, eyes drawn to the single blossom that had defied the rest. Blood red, its petals perfectly symmetrical. A vision of beauty in full bloom that clung to life amid the thorns. I reached out, letting my fingers trail along the curve of the rose—drawn not just by curiosity, but by something deeper. Recognition.
Its velvety petals unfurled just slightly beneath my touch, as if listening. The moment my fingertips brushed the bloom, the air shifted. Not the way it usually did when I touched an object—no familiar tug of memory pulling me into its story—but something stranger.
It wasn’t a vision, not quite. More like a breath shared between worlds—an echo of emotion that belonged to neither of us…and yet somehow to both. A flicker of warmth pulsed through my chest, faint as the last ember in a dying fire as fragmented images played across my mind.
A silhouette framed by thorns. A hand reaching through darkness, searching. A whispered name that vanished before I could hear it. Two figures passing each other like ghosts, always turning a heartbeat too late. A rose blooming out of season, its petals falling upward instead of down.
The sensation vanished like mist scattered by wind. I gasped and jerked my hand back.
My companion turned sharply towards me. “What did you do?”
It took a moment to push through the haze left behind by the incomplete memory enough for his words to settle over me. “Did you see?—?”
He hesitated before slowly nodding. My breath caught, but I had no response. The memories and secrets my powers revealed had always belonged to me alone.
He turned his stunned expression to the rose, as though seeing it for the first time. “I’ve tended to these flowers every day. Nothing ever happens.” His gaze snapped to mine, intense and searching. “Who are you?”
I opened my mouth to lie, but though I was a master weaver of deceit, none were forthcoming.
Suddenly, the rose beside us shuddered. One dying bloom drooped toward me, its color leached to near-grey, as if the vision extracted from it had robbed it of its color. A horrified gasp escaped the man’s mouth, and he turned accusing eyes on me, more emotion than I’d seen from him so far.
Years of taking the objects whose history interested me compelled me to move without thinking. Dream or not, I was unsatisfied with the incomplete story the rose had shown me, and was desperate to explore it further.
In one quick movement, I reached out and gently plucked it. He lurched forward. “Don’t—” But it was too late.
