Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28266772-20170628150758

So it's worth mentioning that a recent story of mine posted here has yet to make it to the wikia itself. That's not a reflection of my disinterest in the story, but rather a firm belief that I need to dedicate much more time to bringing that particular story (called Sublime Terra) up to a higher standard. I don't want to give off the sense that I do not value the feedback I receive here. Instead, I'm just spending a lot more time on my individual stories, and some of them need a lot of time to be brought up to scratch (which is particularly true for Sublime).

Amongst my biggest concerns with my writing have been issues with character, arcs, choice, and overall structure. This new story is a different tact to normal, one that has been borne out of my attempts to include a more proactive characer. A story built around choice, lessons, and relationships. Looking back on my previous efforts I've noticed a trend of passivity. Of protagonists living a normal life until something batters the walls down and fucks it all up for them. This story represents an active attempt at addressing that shortcoming.

This is a long-ish story, on it's sixth or seventh draft. Any and all thoughts are welcome.

-

The Garden had been abandoned for some time when Charlotte stumbled across it. It immediately enchanted her childish imagination with its heavy moss-covered stones and its overgrown garden which obscured a small chapel whose tower rose above the canopy. It was a place thick with the sounds of thumbnail sized beetles and creaking vines, and the smell of rotting compost and pollen-laden air. It looked as though it could hide all kinds of half-forgotten secrets. Charlotte watched a snail the size of her palm, slowly and audibly, slither its way up a branch covered in cracked lichen, and she wondered what this place really was. She remembered some old stories of lions and other fairy tales and she wondered if, like a wardrobe (only damper), there might be a whole realm hidden in the twisting branches and obscure foliage. Like all children she dreamed of a realm where she might be queen and live a new, more noble, life free of parental instruction.

She took a step across the threshold and entered the grounds. Strangely enough the first thing she did was turn and look back towards the feeble cast-iron archway that marked the entrance. It was barely a foot behind her and yet the golden rays of sunlight that fell just beyond seemed miles away. She turned and walked towards the nearest thing of distinction; a bird bath. A small concave cup made of chipped stone which stood at a cross road of pathways. The bowl was dry and grimy and contained only slow-moving insects that fenced clumsily with strange mandibles and peculiar anatomical specialisations. Charlotte lowered a chubby finger and poked one of the beetles on a ladybird-like head that sat atop a folded neck longer than its owner’s body. It reacted slowly and Charlotte giggled as it craned its weird face up to look at her.

It went back to its duel with the care of an old man making tea and Charlotte walked away wondering if time moved at the same speed for little things like beetles as it did for bigger things like her. And, furthermore, if even bigger things like planets moved on completely different scales. She tried to imagine how the trees might consider the world around them and she placed her hand against the wet and crumbling bark of a nearby oak whose roots toppled the slabs of the nearby path like dozens of chessboards mid-flip. Charlotte could almost grasp the scope of the tree’s ancient life if she imagined the world as though she were seeing it through a TV on fast forward; the tree moving gracefully as it rose out of the ground while trivial little things (like her) whipped past it at break-neck speeds.

She let go and carried on along a direction which brought her close enough to the chapel that she could walk up and touch it directly. Its walls were an endearing patchwork of stones that fit together in a jigsaw pattern so tightly it would have blown away anyone with the slightest knowledge of how buildings ought to be built. Its dimensions would have also unsettled the sensibly adult, but thankfully Charlotte was none of those things. She merely marvelled at the beauty of the tower as it rose up into the thicket of trees to reach a height so great that Charlotte could only crane her neck until it hurt. But still, she kept her eyes fixed on that point above and held them there until the world around seemed to shift and the wall became a road reaching upwards, and its vanishing point hinted at a new, wonderful, horizon that reached up into the sky.

A horizon she could walk on.

With her eyes still fixed on the thicket above—she briefly observed a grey fluffy tail whipping around a branch, sending all sorts of debris tumbling down towards her—and tentatively raised a foot and pressed it flat against a wall. Without any further thought, or even a sense of wonder, she raised the other and did the same, and began to walk up the vertical wall of the church with the kind of off-handed pragmatism that only a child can conjure.

Somewhere, above the treeline, she could see some break in the monotone cobblestone pattern and knew, faintly, that it was some kind of window. She yearned to see the stained-glass colours up close as she had always wanted to do in church on Sundays so she continued upwards until she approached the window and could admire its beauty. She leaned down to trace the strange patterns of the foot-wide stained-glass window with its candy-coloured segments bound by thin and rusted wires. The pattern was strange and precious and as her fingers ran across it she felt a sense of wholesome one-ness with the garden below.

If there was any part of Charlotte that could have looked at the ground hundreds of feet below and in the completely wrong direction, and the new horizon that stretched vertically towards the sky, and experienced vertigo, it was now bitterly suppressed by the beauty of the window. Instead any anxiety was replaced with a feeling of awe and curiosity. A feeling that was only magnified as she looked up and realised that she stood at a threshold between the canopy and sky. She barely even noticed that the window was but one of only thousands in view; part of a new and infinite horizon that rose perpendicular to the old one. She only had enough sense to find it strange, but nonetheless enchanting. She rose and turned her attention the tree branches that she could now reach out and touch (which she did). In doing so, she dislodged bits of rotting leaves left over from autumns years before and spinning backwards to the ground below. When she looked back from the falling litter she saw a squirrel and for the first time since her adventure she felt some apprehension.

It was a blind idiot squirrel, and it was fat like some overfed classroom pet. It sat on a branch in such a way that it was perched directly over Charlotte’s face, staring into her eyes from above, like a predator. It chewed mindlessly at its own paws, dripping blood that flowed in two directions, one to the real ground, one to the wall upon which Charlotte was stood. While doing so it maintained an intense gaze on Charlotte with its scratched and pale corneas. Its ears purposefully swivelled and turned at every flutter and click that sighed out of the garden below. Suddenly, from somewhere in the darkness, a pinecone fell and made a distinctive clack which drew the squirrel’s attention and sent it scurrying away. Charlotte felt immediately relieved and turned back to the round window which she approached.

She admired its beauty, but felt compelled to leave it behind and walk higher up towards the clouds. She did so, and paused to occasionally only to trace another pattern across another precious jewelled glass windows, until, after hours, she finally met another pilgrim along this strange road. A strange robed figure dragging a cart laden with sacks of assorted size that wobbled with each and every stone that the wheels passed over, this strange man had his back turned to Charlotte while he muttered to himself in the manner of one with lots of business and no time.

“Hello,” Charlotte said with a smile and the figure turned with a terrible start. Noticing the young girl he immediately began to pat himself down and tried to look proper by grinning. Charlotte noticed that the man was not robed per se, but rather he was actually an enlarged man-shaped robe. His grin was a crescent tear across the rolled-up, head-shaped, turban-like clump of fabric that made up what others would call a head.

“G’evenin’ m’lady!” he cried. “You’ve been most lucky to stumble upon S’Lerrin for he, today and only today, is in possession of a vast wealth of un-imag-ina-bul objects and trinkets to please a young lady such as yourself.” Charlotte frowned and quizzically leaned her head across to look at the dirty pile of hessian sacks piled up on S’Lerrin’s cart.

“Are you a mummy?” she asked, referring the old films her father watched.

A little taken aback S’Lerrin immediately began rambling,

“Well I’ve certainly been through a few launders and a man can’t always account for every companion he meets on a long and lonely pilgrim’s road so I imagine it’s quite possible some lucky dishrag has found herself nursing a silken babe who bears a resemblance to my own strong-lined outline although whether that makes me the mother, a purely biological concept, is entirely sub—”

Charlotte giggled.

“What on Earth are you talking about?” she asked. S’Lerrin blushed a little—an effect reminiscent of a jack-o-lantern flaring with light-from-within—and shook his head.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Never mind,” he said nervously. “I didn’t mean to brag! It’s just a personal question. I mean, are you a mother?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“No,” Charlotte said. “I have one though.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“That’s good, everyone ought to,” S’Lerrin said with a nod. “Now let’s talk about trade. How about jewellery?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I have no money,” Charlotte answered. “I’m only meant to be going for a quick stroll but I’ve completely lost track of myself. I should be going home, actually.” Charlotte turned around and looked down towards the garden that was about two miles beneath her. Looking up at the real-horizon she noticed that no details of her own world remained visible; just an indistinct curtain of green rolling hills, like someone had fashioned an entire world from a post-card version of Britain. This would be acceptable if, perhaps, Charlotte didn’t live only twenty miles outside of London. Thus, for the first time since crossing the arch, Charlotte began to gain a sense of perspective and wondered if any of this was actually real. “I think I should go home,” she said with apprehension.

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin looked anxious and blurted,

<p class="MsoNormal">“Are you sure you don’t…” he pointed to his cart. “I mean, you haven’t even looked!”

<p class="MsoNormal">   “I have no money, sorry,” Charlotte said sincerely. “Mother doesn’t give me pocket money until the weekend and even then, it must go into the piggy bank. She says it’s important to have a nest-egg.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“She’s not wrong,” S’Lerrin replied with a mild grimace (good monetary sense is a merchant’s greatest foe). “But look if you don’t want to pay cash-money, how about a trade?”

<p class="MsoNormal">   “A trade?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Yes,” S’Lerrin nodded enthusiastically, creating an image a bit like a laundry basket left on the bow of a ship in a storm. “A trade.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I don’t have anything worth having,” Charlotte replied. She opened her arms a little in a kind of curtsy; a non-verbal declaration of, this is all I have.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Let’s not start with what I want,” S’Lerrin mused softly. “Let’s focus on what you want. Now, if you’ll just be patient...” The cloth-man turned with a whipping sound and started to rummage around in the cart behind him. Charlotte glimpsed some peculiar things as he searched, and the noises that came from each sack were an assortment of clunks, clinks, bumps and clangs. He would loosen the drawstring of a sack, out would come the sound, and in would go his hand. He would then promptly withdraw it with a look of frustration, pull the string tight, and the sound would stop. It was like listening to someone impatiently flip through the TV channels.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Ah, here we go!” he said at last.

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin turned around and presented Charlotte with a fabric parcel that he gingerly, almost nervously, unfolded in his open palm. “Now this is absolutely precious!” he declared. “It’s unbelievably valuable and it comes straight from the sands of Titan. Its jewel was pulled from the vitreous jelly of a galactic leviathan and polished by the micro-gravity dwelling Stollids who, despite their odour, are magnificent jewellers. The surrounding metal work comes from the marvellous and delicate fingers of the Alac foundry-workers and is made of a beautiful alloy that, so they tell me, was pillaged from the remains of The First Tree.”

<p class="MsoNormal">S'Lerric’s hollow fabric eyes widened as he waited for Charlotte’s reaction. She leaned over it and examined it carefully. She had to admit, it was beautiful.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I have nothing,” Charlotte said with a look of sincere desire and melancholy. “I’m sorry.” It clearly pained her to see the brooch and know she could not have it, and as she spoke she drew one foot behind the other as though seconds from turning away. But S’Lerrin, who had never seen anyone dressed like her and knew that no one walked this road unless they were very wealthy (or very unlucky), tried once more.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Oh come now, you must have something.”

<p class="MsoNormal">Charlotte thought for a moment with the mental strain of a child making an important decision.

<p class="MsoNormal">“What about my scarf?” she asked. She then unwound the woollen scarf of a bright red hue from around her neck and gestured to S’Lerrin so that he might inspect it. He approached and Charlotte came to appreciate just how odd his fabric-face was. It seemed to shiver, as though every thread itself were alive and independent. Yet, despite this, it spoke only of a pleasant—albeit flappable and uncertain—character and intent. After a second of deliberation S’Lerrin looked up,

<p class="MsoNormal">“Is it magic?” he asked, hoping perhaps that he had missed something.

<p class="MsoNormal">“No,” Charlotte replied in a bemused tone. “It’s just a scarf.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“It is… uh, very red,” S’Lerrin added, not wanting to sound insulting. “But this brooch is… well it’s… it’s priceless.”

<p class="MsoNormal">Charlotte’s face fell into a pout.

<p class="MsoNormal">“No I understand,” she said. “I had no way of knowing I’d need any money. I can’t afford the brooch, I’m sorry. In fact,” she said while taking a brief survey of her surroundings, “I’m not entirely sure why I even came this way, money or not.”

<p class="MsoNormal">Suddenly her little green eyes widened and shone with a kind of iridescence. S’Lerrin felt a faint sensation of hope and began to wonder if he’d cracked this mysterious traveller’s iron-will.

<p class="MsoNormal">“What if we played a game for it?” she asked. “How about rock-paper-scissors?”

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin became startled and took a few steps back.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Look here!” he cried. “There’s no need for violence but I’ll have you know that if you intend to come at me with scissors,” and he hissed the last word as though it were an inflammatory curse, which to him it almost certainly was, “then I definitely will not be doing busi—”

<p class="MsoNormal">Charlotte caught on quickly.

<p class="MsoNormal">“No,” she said with a chuckle. “It’s a game.”

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin relaxed a little.

<p class="MsoNormal">“A game?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Yes, a game,” she said. “If I win I’ll give you my scarf and get nothing in return. If I win, you give me the brooch for free.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Hmmmm,” S’Lerrin nodded. “I understand the notion of a wager. But, it feels a bit unfair, my brooch against your scarf.”

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin had underestimated just how badly the brooch would appeal to Charlotte, and he was soon to pay the price for baiting an over-confident child.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Have you not heard of Camden wool?” she said with a puzzled look.

<p class="MsoNormal">“N-n-n-why yes of course,” S’Lerrin stuttered.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Well then you should know it comes from magical sheep in the rolling hills of, uh, London.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“London?” S’Lerrin asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Oh yes,” Charlotte smiled. “It’s a very cosmopolitan place. Centre of the world”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Just the one!?” S’Lerrin asked, but before Charlotte could reply he continued under the assumption he’d misheard, and did so with rapid-fire confidence. “Of course I’ve heard of the place. London, centre of many worlds. I just, hardly expected you to, uh, have one of its fine goods on your, uh, your uh…”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Neck,” Charlotte finished for him.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Although it still looks like an ordinary scarf to me,” he added, starting to feel some doubt.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I thought you were an expert,” Charlotte said with the sly self-willed purpose of a snake convincing a mouse that there’s prime real estate just over the crest of its tongue. “It is a scarf, but it’s an extremely valuable scarf.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Oh all right,” S’Lerrin said in one big exhale; he could feel himself wound up with curiosity. “Let’s play this rock-paper-mumble you seem so keen on.”

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin was surprisingly adept at circular logic. Despite his other-worldliness he grasped the general premise of the game quite easily. What he struggled, however, with was the emotional pain of discussing scissors. As he and the child stood on the vertical wall of an infinitely tall church tower he would wince and grimace every time a practice round forced them to discuss the metal cutting implements. This was a pretty serious crutch; he could not, would not, mimic the necessary gesture to play scissors and when the time came for the real game, the outcome of which would determine who won both items, Charlotte quickly took advantage by going paper every time.

<p class="MsoNormal">When it all ended S’Lerrin found himself handing over a brooch with a look of discomfort on his face. He wasn’t overly pained; the brooch was, truthfully, not even that valuable. But he was most definitely put off by the realisation that he’d most certainly been played for a fool, and by a child no less. Charlotte, feeling an almost visceral shiver at the sight of the brooch, quickly made some polite responses and turned away to leave, wary of how far she might get before the trader tried to turn back on their deal.

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin, however, decided to bring a subtler tactic to bare.

<p class="MsoNormal">“It would be most improper for a young lady to return home alone,” he shouted after her. “Perhaps I ought to accompany you.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“There’s no need,” Charlotte cried back with a polite—or perhaps sarcastic—bow of thanks. “I know my way. It’s back through the garden.”

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin watched her move away. He felt the seconds running out. He wasn’t aware of exactly where he’d heard the words The Garden, just that he’d heard them somewhere before and that they had been said in tones that spoke of historical guilt, shame, immense suffering and still-present danger.

<p class="MsoNormal">He brushed this thought away and decided to act on his hunch. He pursued the girl rapidly, and when she turned to see him—having heard his flat-footed womp-womps behind her—he smiled as enthusiastically and sincerely as he could.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I simply cannot allow you to proceed alone,” he said. “Please, allow me to accompany you, as a, err, chaperone?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“A deal’s a deal,” Charlotte said with an expression that could curdle milk.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I would never dare to rescind, that is not at all the reason why I’m invested in travelling further with you” S’Lerrin replied. “It’s a matter of safety. In fact, I insist I follow you back.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I suppose,” Charlotte said cautiously. “Thank you, I think. It’s this way.” She pointed, gingerly, towards the giant green abyss ahead of them.

<p class="MsoNormal">For some reason the journey back was much longer than the way there. Both Charlotte and S’Lerrin represented opposite ends of a spectrum that, when together, produced an interesting result. That being, Charlotte was too naïve to question the bizarre nature of the walk, and S’Lerrin was too experienced to treat it as anything but mundane, and so the two walked without concern along a road that was a mere thread between realities. Charlotte, only a child, couldn’t have even said why she had pointed back towards the ground when saying where she was from (it was the only direction one could realistically travel aside from towards the clouds). S’Lerrin, in contrast was all too thankful, because whether Charlotte knew it or not there were more directions (she just hadn’t noticed them), and the gesture was helpful.

<p class="MsoNormal">At the time S’Lerrin took the gesture as just a sign that the girl, though young, was experienced with the road between realities. S’Lerrin only really became aware that he was shepherding someone quite naïve to it all when he stopped to draw her attention to the sky behind them.

<p class="MsoNormal">“It’s coming,” he said with a smile, before telling her to watch carefully. Moments later an enormous tail broke through the parting clouds. Its end was made of an enormous gossamer membranous sail, like that belonging to a tropical fish. And it was brightly coloured like one too; shimmering in the undulating shades of a rainbow on oil. But powering the delicate sail was a widening bow of flesh, with thick predatory muscles covered in car-sized scales. Even the church tower with its infinite length and cosmic proportions looked like but a needle in comparison, and Charlotte watched in breathless awe at the barely-caught glimpse of a rainbow coloured serpent.

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin was shocked to see that Charlotte had been crying in a gentle, almost religious, manner. It took him a few moments to put it all together, at which point he knelt down and wiped the tears her tears away.

<p class="MsoNormal">“You’ve never been here before, have you?” he asked, and Charlotte shook her head. “It must be all quite strange to you,” he added with a smile. “I felt the same when I saw it for the first time too. It’s almost like, the longer you stay here, the more you’re mind insists it isn’t a dream, and the more bizarre it all feels.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“How did you get here?” he added in a gentle coo.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I don’t know,” Charlotte answered, wiping her face with her sleeve. “I just came through a garden.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“You just... wandered and ended up here?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Yes,” Charlotte nodded.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Come on,” S’Lerrin said. His expression was briefly troubled as he turned her around and patted her on the back, but he soon enough shook it off and added an almost cheery, “let’s go!”

<p class="MsoNormal">Not long after, they reached their destination. The two travellers noticed the saw the wall of foliage grow dense and detailed. It was a static shape of bubbling, rolling and rising green shapes that spoke of thick and verdant growth. The sight resembled the sort a helicopter pilot would be very familiar with if he had spent his life flying over places like Columbia and Vietnam. It was unmistakeably beautiful but the mind could not help but be troubled by the way it stood erect and perpendicular to the floor in a way that tree-top canopies and not wont to do.

<p class="MsoNormal">When S’Lerrin noticed Charlotte’s growing nerves he momentarily attributed it to some aspect of naïve-shock. But when they finally passed the canopy-wall and went within—becoming immediately hidden from the sun and immersed in the cool breeze of a shaded woodland—Charlotte began to look up and shake. S’Lerrin followed her gaze and soon realised why she was anxious.

<p class="MsoNormal">He was looking at the squirrel.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I thought as much,” he whispered.

<p class="MsoNormal">“What is it?” Charlotte asked him.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Nothing,” he muttered, “whatever it is you think it is. You said a squirrel? Yes. Then it’s a squirrel.” He then promptly began pushing Charlotte closer to their destination. “Don’t worry about it,” he added with little conviction. Moments later they reached the ninety-degree fold between realities and S’Lerrin watched as Charlotte, with the sort of childish absent-mindedness happily onto the flat path of The Garden. S’Lerrin was not so calm about being pulled between realities but, desperate to save face, he did his best to look as though he wasn’t at all concerned.

<p class="MsoNormal">“There we go,” he said with a dry and nervous swallow after stepping onto the embanked soil that met the church. Charlotte had already moved a step or two forward so that she stood on the path that took her towards the bird-bath.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I think I can go the rest of the way myself,” she said, noticing S’Lerrin’s furtive glances at the almost tropic tree growth that surrounded them.

<p class="MsoNormal">“No no,” he said politely. “I must see you safe to your own world.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I thought this is my world,” Charlotte said.

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin shook his head and mumbled something about “in-between-y places”. He then gently took Charlotte’s hand and walked, with a slightly hurried pace, along the path. Charlotte tried to draw his attention to the bird bath as they passed it—she wanted him to see the long-necked beetle—but he gave her no time. Gone was his goofy demeanour, for it was slowly being eroded and replaced with a determined urgency. This grim and sombre tone was only broken when they came to the cast-iron archway that Charlotte had first walked through hours before. Remembering to be polite and denying the urge to push Charlotte through it with haste and no care, S’Lerrin took a breath and turned to the young girl. He said,

<p class="MsoNormal">“You have been the most charming person to have ever accompanied me on a short journey.” He then smiled his rumpled grin and just as he was preparing himself to give the girl a good shove through the arch, she suddenly turned and looked at him with a look of deliberation, and just a hint of sadness, upon her face.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Here,” she said removing the brooch from her pocket. “I’ve been thinking, and it wasn’t fair for me to trick you earlier.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I’m not sure it was quite a trick.” S’Lerrin replied with smile.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Well it certainly wasn’t honest,” Charlotte said guiltily. S’Lerrin looked down at the brooch and thought for a moment.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Well it wouldn’t exactly be honest to take it back, would it? I accepted the deal, and I’d more than happy to keep to the terms if it’d gone my way,” he said. “Besides, I hate anything that has a pin on the back.” S’Lerrin gave a visible quiver. “They go right through me.”

<p class="MsoNormal">Charlotte giggled, seemed to spend another second or two in deep thought, and then decided to unwind her scarf from around her neck. She then handed it to S’Lerrin.

<p class="MsoNormal">“A trade then? I mean, a proper one. My brooch for the scarf? I know it’s not exactly the best scarf in the world, but it’d feel better if you got something,” she said. S’Lerrin looked down at the scarf and nodded. It was hardly a fair exchange but it was an endearing gesture. As he reached out to take it he heard a scuttling from above and he suddenly remembered the danger they were in. Taking one more moment to say goodbye to Charlotte, S’Lerrin took the scarf, thanked her, and then promptly pushed her through the archway with the intensity he’d originally intended just moments before.

<p class="MsoNormal">This was not done out of contempt, but rather a sense of drastic concern.

<p class="MsoNormal">With that Charlotte found herself thrown through the archway where she lost her footing and fell over. It seemed to her that the world spun around much faster than it ought to have, and it gave the effect that she had travelled a great distance even though she knew that was simply impossible. And yet despite this certainty, Charlotte could not find the archway when she rose up—brushing dried leaves from her hair—ready to scold S’Lerrin for his last-minute rudeness.

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin meanwhile was left standing, in deathly silence, in The Garden. He was taking the time to try and remember some childhood tale about an ancient King, a horrific garden containing a ravenous monster, and some other details involving the multiverse but he couldn’t get all the details clear. He soon realised that maybe he could put more effort in remembering such details after he was safe. Before moving he looked up and noticed that the overlapping weave of leafy branches above—possessing a dark and sickly green palette not typically associated with summer growth—showed no signs of strange interdimensional predatory life. He breathed a sigh of relief and tried his absolute best to not think of the grotesque creature Charlotte had pointed out to him on the way in. She thought it harmless, but around its frayed edges S’Lerrin had just about seen the hints of something tucked away in unseen dimensions.

<p class="MsoNormal">A guardian, he remembered, the after-math of a war? Or was it something to do with a tomb?

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin shook his head and began his journey back. Thankfully he possessed great capacity for stealth and he made his way along the cobbled path. When he arrived at the place where the church met the ground he raised his foot to the wall and felt a stomach churning sensation as gravity travelled with him. Once again, the wall became a floor and the floor became a wall. He continued upwards and stopped only at the round stained-glass window which had passed beneath his attention on the previous trip. Its appearance was mesmerising in the glistening sunlight.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Remarkable,” he muttered as he too traced the outline of the precious wire pattern only to find his attention drawn by the flecks of oily red fluid that whittled past his cotton ear and struck the window with a tap. When S’Lerrin looked up he saw a tree branch reaching out of the green; it’s thick wooden arm tapering to a knife-edge that pointed at him like a finger. S’Lerrin followed that accusing point back and gasped when he spotted the grotesque and overfed squirrel whose weight bent the branches it sat upon like a great weight lying on reeds.

<p class="MsoNormal">Immediately S’Lerrin threw himself forward with a scream and began to run. What sat on the branch unfolded itself, pouring out of hidden dimensions into The Garden—a place it was slavishly devoted to—and began to give chase. S’Lerrin fled, desperate to reach his cart so far away, with such speed and urgency that he occasionally fell. Even then he never stopped going forward, instead continuing in a half-run half-crawl as he tried to prop himself upright with his hands and finger tips. At one point in his frantic chase he chanced a brief glimpse back and saw the tower and the whole world behind him consumed by a florid expanse of fleshy mouths and pink-taffy flesh that bubbled out of unseen places.

<p class="MsoNormal">Much like the squirrel it pretended to be, the guardian was blind, stupid, and overfed. S’Lerrin knew that a fat predator was, despite all appearances, a good predator and so he felt a quivering sense of inescapable doom run down his nylon nervous system. Moments later, a gut-wrenching gust of wind (both hot and wet) bellowed out of some unseen maw snapping inches behind him. Horrifically afraid, S’Lerrin kept on going despite exhaustion until, at last, something caught him and he was brought crashing to the ground with the sound of a duvet being thrown off a bed.

<p class="MsoNormal">He looked up and winced in agony as his leg was slowly unravelled like spaghetti off a fork. Feeling utmost despair he saw that his cart was only metres away and he tried to pull himself further towards it, knowing that as he did so he only worsened the uncoiling of his material-self. Hoping that this might actually be his salvation S’Lerrin suddenly turned and faced down the wretched horror that had emerged from the lavish garden like some kind of molten pulp of skin, pores, teeth and tongues. It was horrifying, and that helped S’Lerrin make a rapid-fire decision with grim determination.

<p class="MsoNormal">He gripped his leg, which now resembled a roll of unfurled ribbon that started at his knee, and pulled with all his strength. There was a loud snapping sound (familiar to all living things, for even flesh needs stringy tendons) and the leg came apart. What remained of S’Lerrin’s leg was a tattered ribbon that was quickly consumed by The Guardian with a loud schlurp. By the time it had licked its misshapen lips S’Lerrin had already propelled himself onto his wagon and disappeared into the open neck of one his own sacks.

<p class="MsoNormal">From there, he escaped to somewhere safe, and even The Ward was left with a moment of confusion as it watched the wooden cart turn inside out without ever really changing shape. Afterwards, feeling bitterly disappointed at the lack of a proper meal, it turned around, folded itself back into the shape of a squirrel, and went back to tending The Garden.

<p class="MsoNormal">S’Lerrin, thankful of his escape but pained by the loss of his original leg, was left panting and exhausted on the sands of a blue desert he recognised clearly from earlier travels. It was a pleasant enough place and would surely have someone on hand who, familiar with his unique biology, could help him get a new leg. Clutching the red knotty scarf S’Lerrin suddenly left behind his saddened thoughts and smiled—laughed even—because he knew exactly what he could use for the replacement. <ac_metadata title="The Garden (~5,500 words)"> </ac_metadata>