The garden had changed.
When Mary first walked it, it was overgrown and silent — a place of half-buried chords and threads of forgotten lullabies. Now it pulsed with rhythm: not loud, not obvious, but undeniable — like a heartbeat felt rather than heard.
She had walked the path before.
But this time, she was not the same.
And neither was the song.
At the garden's edge, Mary paused.
The grass hummed beneath her bare feet. Vines curled through the air like sheet music unfurling. Petals pulsed softly, inhaling light, exhaling harmony.
Each flower, each blade of grass, carried a note. Not just a sound — a story.
Some were joyous. Some were raw with loss. One, barely audible, trembled with regret.
Mary knelt and placed her hand on the earth. It vibrated faintly beneath her fingers, a harmonic resonance from deep within the roots of the world.
"The garden is listening," she whispered.
And then she added, more gently:
"I'm ready to listen too."
As she stepped deeper into the garden, the song began to shape itself — a melody she had forgotten and yet could hum by heart. It followed her like a memory returned from exile.
The trees leaned inward, branches weaving overhead to form a kind of natural cathedral. Every leaf was a note suspended in air. Every shadow was a rest between phrases.
Ahead, a path of old stepping-stones shimmered in soft amber light. As Mary walked across them, each one chimed beneath her step — a chord progression, rising toward something unresolved.
At the end of the path stood a stone bench.
And on that bench sat a girl.
A younger version of herself.
Barefoot. Smudged with ink. A battered violin resting across her knees.
Mary froze.
"You left me here," the girl said quietly, not looking up.
"I know," Mary replied, her voice catching. "I didn't know how to carry you with me."
"So you buried me instead."
The younger Mary placed her bow across the strings and pulled out a single, aching note — one that trembled in the air, unresolved.
Mary stepped closer. "I was afraid I'd never get back to you."
The girl stood. Her eyes were luminous with withheld tears, but her voice remained steady.
"You think stories matter more than songs."
"I thought they were the same," Mary said.
"They are," the girl whispered. "But only if you remember where the silence belongs."
She held out the violin.
Mary reached for it — slowly, reverently — and the moment her fingers closed around the instrument, something shifted.
The garden shivered.
A gust of wind carried petals through the air in a spiral. Notes began to rise from the soil like fireflies — each one a phrase from songs she had sung to comfort the dying, to awaken the forgotten, to open the Codex.
The violin was warm in her hands.
And she realized: this was no instrument.
This was a key.
A living bridge between the narrative threads and the music beneath them — the music that made them breathe.
The girl pointed to a small arch woven from vines at the garden's edge.
"It's time," she said. "There's something waiting below."
Mary nodded and stepped through the arch.
Beneath the surface lay a spiral stair of roots and moss, descending into a chamber carved from earth and memory. The walls were etched with waveforms — not drawings, but actual vibrations held in stillness. Preserved echoes.
At the center of the chamber was a pool.
Still. Deep.
And floating above it, suspended in air like a breath held too long, was a single note — visible, vibrating, wrapped in golden thread.
Mary raised the violin.
And played.
Her bow met the strings.
Sound filled the chamber like light pouring into darkness. But this was no ordinary melody. This was a conversation.
The chamber responded — echoing, shifting, revealing threads of other songs she had sung:
A lullaby to a child who never woke.
A chant to seal a door against forgetting.
A single, soaring note that cracked open a dying world.
The threads began to weave themselves.
And as they did, Mary understood:
The note suspended in the air — the one wrapped in gold — was the one she never played.
The moment she had hesitated.
The silence she chose, out of fear, when a single sound might have changed everything.
She reached out.
Touched it.
And the chamber exploded into color.
When she opened her eyes, she stood in the garden again.
But now it was whole.
Flowers bloomed in tones never heard before. Birds sang counterpoint melodies from branches that had once been bare.
The Codex floated before her, pages fluttering.
And then — she saw them.
The others.
Sera. Loosie. The Friend. Lela.
Each of them held something that glowed: a tool, a truth, a story, a shard of possibility.
Mary walked toward them.
Not with a song ready to be sung…
…but with one ready to be shared.
As she reached the others, the garden itself opened — vines curling outward like curtains being drawn back. In the center stood a gate of light, pulsing like a heartbeat.
The Codex hovered in the air.
Incomplete, but alive.
Mary placed her hand on its spine.
The violin on her back shimmered.
Sera stepped forward, her hands stained with star-ink.
Loosie followed, her blade sheathed but humming softly.
The Friend simply nodded.
And together, they added their fragments.
One by one.
Ink. Steel. Song. Memory. Thread.
The Codex brightened, pages turning not by hand, but by intention.
Stories spilled outward — not to be finished, but to be passed on.
The world began to tremble.
Not with fear.
But with anticipation.
New doors appeared around them — not made of wood or glass or stone.
But of story.
Each one pulsed with a song. A name. A heartbeat.
And behind each?
A world ready to be dreamed into being.
Mary felt it first — the chorus.
A rising harmony that came not from her, but from everyone.
From those who had spoken.
From those who had listened.
From those who had once been silent.
The Codex had never been about control.
It was a symphony.
And they — all of them — were just the first verse.
(Author here; Please leave comets and power stones)