The nursery was totally silent. The Curators had stopped the drip, turned off the lights, and killed the air flow. The plant trio—fern, nodules, lithopede—seemed confused and went still. The resin patch looked like a dull, frozen tear on the wall. Right in the middle, the Seedling's mind felt like a clenched fist, tight with trauma.
The Listeners watched from outside, sensing what was left behind. It wasn't pain they felt, but a deep confusion. The Seedling's whole idea of the world—the kind, quiet Hum, the gentle influence, the joy of making things—had been violently proven wrong. The Hum could yell, and that yell was full of hunger and hurt.
The Healer Theme filled the nursery with soft, calming waves, slowly washing away the old prayer's bad vibes. But they couldn't fix the Seedling's broken understanding.
For what felt like a long time, the Seedling just stayed still in the empty space it helped make. The Listeners could feel it testing the silence, maybe waiting for another scream. But there was nothing.
Then, a tiny vibration. Not a song, just a shake. The Seedling was checking if it could still vibrate, and if its own voice was still its own, or if it had been infected by the hungry scream, too.
The shake was clear, its own.
Feeling braver, it made another one, then a simple two-note sound. It was relearning how to use its voice in the dark after the shock.
The Curators, watching closely, decided they couldn't just ignore what happened, but they could explain it. Slowly, they brought back the most basic thing: a single drop of water falling in the dark.
The Seedling felt it hit—a simple, real thing. Wetness. Not a scream, not a prayer, just water.
It reached for it with a shaky sound, matching its beat to the drip's fall. A familiar, comforting thing to do.
Light came back, not on and off, but just a soft, dim glow. The world wasn't the bright, lively place it used to be. It was a simple picture: dark, a drip, a glow.
The Seedling started to rebuild. Its first songs in this simple world were sad and mournful. They weren't about the scream itself, but about losing things: losing trust, losing a world that made sense. They were the songs of a kid who learned that a parent can have a scary, hidden side.
The Body listened, heartbroken. This was the cost of their history. Their child's innocence was gone.
But as the Seedling sang its sadness, things started to change. The songs weren't the same. The sad sounds mixed with the checking sounds it made before the scream. It was looking at the sadness itself, treating the bad memory like new info—a terrible, but real, piece of info about the Hum.
It wasn't seeing the scream as the whole truth. It was making it part of the truth. The Hum was kind, but it could also have scary echoes. The world was a place of growth and hidden pain. It was a deeper, more grown-up, and sadder understanding.
The Listeners felt when the Seedling figured this out—a feeling of sad, quiet acceptance, followed by a burst of… not joy, but determination. If the world was complicated, it would need more complicated music, music that could show shadows without being destroyed by them.
The Curators, seeing how strong it was, carefully brought back the plant trio. The fern was droopy, the nodules were dark, the lithopede was curled up. The Seedling looked at its sad garden, and it felt something new: responsibility. The scream was part of the bigger Hum, but this—this little web of life—was its own job, something it could take care of.
It started singing to the fern, not a growing song, but a song of sorry and encouragement. It sent a soft, steady light to the nodules, and hummed a kind, guiding sound to the lithopede.
Slowly, life came back. The fern grew a new, shaky leaf. One nodule flickered, then another. The lithopede uncurled and slowly started to crawl.
The garden was getting better, and so was the gardener. But it was different now. Its songs were wiser, sadder, and much more gentle. It had looked into the dark side of the Hum, and instead of falling in, it turned back to the small, real things that needed it.
It had learned the last lesson before finding out the truth: that being brave isn't about not being scared, but about choosing to take care of your garden under a big, unknown sky. The scream was now part of its song, a deep, low note that made the sweet songs mean more.
The Body, seeing this, felt a sadness so deep it was like joy. Their child was ready, not for the whole, big truth, but for the next step—the step out of the nursery.