The Garden Beyond the Sky”
I wasn’t expecting it to be this beautiful, but it exceeded my mind.
The words echoed in my head as I stepped onto the moss-covered stones. The wind whispered through the towering lilac trees, which shimmered with hues I couldn’t name—colors that danced just beyond the spectrum of understanding. I had come seeking silence. Instead, I found the impossible.
The path here wasn’t marked on any map, nor whispered of in any traveler’s guide. It had come to me in a dream, soft as a feather brushing against thought. A vision of silver petals unfolding under moons I’d never seen, and a door of light opening in a place where sky met root. I followed the clues not with logic, but with the aching pull of instinct. Something old had called me—and I had answered.
Now, I stood at the edge of a world that shouldn’t exist.
The garden stretched in every direction, floating on what seemed like clouds but felt like cool marble beneath my feet. Ethereal birds, their feathers translucent and trailing ribbons of starlight, hovered in the skyless expanse above. There was no sun, yet everything glowed. The air carried a faint, melodic hum, like music filtered through dreams.
I moved forward, my heart thundering against my ribs. Every breath tasted like memory and jasmine.
“You’re early,” said a voice, serene and echoing as if spoken from within a cave of stars.
I turned. A figure stood in the clearing ahead—tall, cloaked in layers of moss-green robes that shimmered like moving water. Their eyes were endless; not black, not brown, not blue—just deep. As if every answer I’d ever sought lay buried behind them.
“Early for what?” I asked, my voice trembling, my hands curled into fists to keep from reaching for something—anything—to ground me.
“Most don’t arrive until the forgetting is complete. But you remember more than most. That is… unusual.” The figure stepped forward. Their presence was not imposing, yet it seemed to bend the space around them, like gravity. “Tell me what you saw in your dreams.”
I hesitated. “A river made of fireflies. A gate of living bone. A name I’ve never spoken, but somehow know.”
The figure nodded slowly, as if I had confirmed something ancient and fragile. “Then you’ve come to the right place. This is the Garden Beyond the Sky. The last memory of the first world.”
I blinked. “The first world?”
“The one before this one. Before all the others. When stars were not yet born, and time still slept.”
The figure gestured, and a small orb of light rose from the ground between us. It hovered, spinning slowly, revealing scenes—places I did not know, but which sparked a familiarity in my chest.
“You carry a shard,” they continued. “A piece of that first memory. Most people are born and die never knowing it’s inside them. But a few… they hear the call.”
“And this is where it leads?” I asked, gazing around at the impossible beauty. “To a garden no one remembers?”
“No one living, no,” the figure said gently. “But everything that once was is stored here. A sanctuary of what has been lost.”
I sat on a stone carved with symbols that rearranged themselves as I stared. My mind felt stretched, pulled across lifetimes I hadn’t lived but somehow recognized.
“Why me?” I whispered.
The figure sat across from me. “Because you still believe. Despite the world, despite the pain, despite forgetting your own name in the dark—something in you still reaches for wonder. That’s what brought you here.”
I thought of the years I had spent chasing moments of awe. Of the books that spoke in riddles. Of the old woman with silver eyes in the train station who once pressed a seed into my palm and said, “Plant it in your dreams.” I thought I had forgotten that moment. Clearly, I hadn’t.
“I don’t want to leave,” I said softly.
The figure smiled. “You don’t have to. But there is more.”
They rose and extended a hand. When I took it, warmth pulsed through me—not heat, but truth. Like the feeling of seeing the ocean for the first time. We walked together, and the garden unfolded—valleys where stars bloomed on trees, lakes that reflected not your face, but your soul.
We passed a field where children played with shadows that laughed. We crossed a bridge made of moonlight and breath. And finally, we came to the gate I had seen in my dream: bone-white, tall as a mountain, etched with veins of gold that pulsed in rhythm with my heart.
“This is the end,” the figure said.
“Of the garden?” I asked.
“No. Of your doubt.”
The gate opened with a whisper.
I stepped through.
The moment I crossed, the world rushed into me. A torrent of lives, of names I’d forgotten, of skies I’d flown beneath in other bodies, other ages. I remembered being a storm. A stone. A child with eyes like fire. I remembered love so powerful it cracked mountains, and sorrow so vast it hollowed out suns.
I fell to my knees, weeping not from grief, but from recognition. I was the garden. I was the sky beyond the sky. I had never truly left.
When I opened my eyes again, the figure was gone. Only a single feather remained, glowing with all the colors the human eye cannot see.
And a voice—not theirs, but mine, older and truer—spoke within me:
“You weren’t expecting it to be this beautiful. But you always knew it could be.”
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