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Dawn, and as sunlight warmed the Tangled Wood, the jubokko slowly uncoiled. It wasn’t the morning that’d awoken her, but rather the call, as energetic as any rooster-crow—

“Come to the gardens, you’ll love it here! The blossoms are simply stunning today!”

Over and over again, with persistent optimism. Cherry Blossoms arched her body; it briefly breached the canopy like a dark brown whale. Then she sank beneath the branches and slithered towards the garden.

Soon the source of the call was visible: a Skydancer, herself all woody browns and greens. “Lovely place for a stroll, come and join us!” she trilled. And she turned towards Cherry Blossoms, revealing not a Skydancer’s face, or any face at all, but a great, heart-red rose, its petals gently pulsating.

“Greetings,” whispered the jubokko, and the rose-faced creature let her pass. Beyond, the garden abounded, sweeping expanses of lawn interspersed with trees and flowers. It looked still and peaceful, but closer examination showed how in some places, the ground steadily rose and fell, and the flowers rustled quietly even though there was no breeze.

A colorful shape was moving around the garden: a Tundra, not a plant, though in his brightly colored clothes, he looked like a flower himself. As he looked up at Cherry Blossoms, he smiled, revealing rows of sharklike teeth. They would have sent most strangers screaming into the sunrise; the teeth, unfortunately, drew attention from his warm eyes.

“Cherry, good morning! Did you sleep well?”

“I caught an intruder. He tasted of fish,” Cherry Blossoms reported. The Tundra clapped his paws. “Excellent, how wonderful!” he gushed—or at least that was what it sounded like. His speech was a bit odd, perhaps because of all the teeth in his mouth.

“I bring you a present.” And Cherry Blossoms’ body rippled grotesquely and produced a ball of slime. The liquid was rapidly absorbed by the ravenous ground of the garden—leaving behind a pawful of dainty Coatl teeth. They sparkled like pearls in the sunshine.

The Tundra gathered them up. “Wonderful, wonderful!” he murmured—not with malevolent glee, but with pure, innocent joy. “Thank you, Cherry, how thoughtful you are. I wish more people were like you.”

“Do you, really?” the jubokko purred. As she spoke, the garden came awake: the ground itself unfolding, foliage stretching apart, monstrous flowers opening to reveal eyes and maws. The denizens of the garden drew closer, stretching their leaves to the sun.

“Yes, of course,” the Tundra replied. He looked round at the arboreal abominations, smiling with genuine warmth. “You are my friends, after all.”

~ ~ ~
The Tundra’s name was Boris Habit, and in the garden, he presented the very picture of peace. His beginnings were not so gentle, however. If asked, he would have said that he’d never had any parents, though there had been dragons who’d raised him.

“Boris! You’ve been neglecting your work again!”

Heavy footsteps, drawing closer. Punishment was inevitable, but still the young dragon searched for a place to hide.

He found it in an inner courtyard, long neglected and overgrown. Moss and ivy clung thickly to the walls; a few flowers bloomed in the far corner, the only place sunlight could reach. Boris crammed himself into a niche in the wall where some stones had fallen out. He huddled there, breathing in the scent of the flowers, and he stared longingly after them later, when he was finally dragged out.

Thereafter, whenever Boris found himself in need of peace, he crept back into that garden. He sat there for hours at a time, watching the flowers swaying in the breeze, water trickling down the mossy walls. The garden was timeless; its inhabitants went through life at their own pace. He wished he could do the same.

But the world kept closing in on him. There was constant pressure from his clan: He had to complete his studies; he had to work, perform operations, experiments! There was no time for dawdling; if he did that, he would be sorry. (And he was, many times.)

Still, he could endure it. All he needed was a place where he could temporarily forget the world and just rest for a while. The garden, with its gentle flowers, so fresh and white and clean...

Early one morning, Boris felt the earth move. It wasn’t enough to jolt him awake, but it disturbed him nonetheless. The rest of his slumber was restless, filled with dreams of endless running.

He woke up feeling exhausted. It was early yet; he still had some time before his studies. He would go to the garden and rest for a while...

But the garden was not there.

He stared, aghast, at the squat, square tower rising in its place. It had literally appeared overnight.

One of the terraformers was loitering nearby. She mistook the Tundra’s silence for awe. “Like it?” she asked, laughing heartily. She didn’t notice the horror creeping over his face as she cheerfully explained—

“Your clan elders hired us to set up a new laboratory here. Didn’t take us long, seeing as there wasn’t much space to work with. Efficient, that’s us!”

And at the edge of Boris’ memory, as though from a long way away: “Boris, you little fool, you’re wasting time here! On this worthless bit of land, you useless, wretched thing...!”

Slowly, he turned away from the builder and trudged dispiritedly to where his studies waited.

Without the garden, there was no refuge. Boris found no comfort in his studies either, for though he came to understand them better, they were irrevocably tied to the gloom and terror he’d faced as a child. The gloom and terror that still returned from day to day.

The garden was clear in his mind and first. The white flowers shone bright, and he could still smell the moss and hear the water trickling down the walls. But as the days passed, the images began blurring together. The water remained constant, though—and it seemed that the trickle grew more forceful every day, until it became a flood that drowned his memory of the garden, choking the flowers and the grass.

It took him a long time to run away from home. This wasn’t strange: From the very beginning, he’d known only unkindness and toil. Why should the world beyond be any different, the people be any less unkind? They who had known him from birth had always treated him harshly; he logically assumed that strangers would treat him worse. The pain his clan gave him was terrible, but it was familiar; it was really all he had.

Till one day it became too much, and finally he fled.

He was fully grown by then, but already so warped and damaged. A part of him had remained frozen in the garden: That little boy Tundra, his eyes fixed on the flowers with a desperate sort of hope. And so it remained when he finally faced the rest of the world, searching for another garden that he could call his own.

~ ~ ~
Boris’ fears were sadly founded. Most dragons regarded him with pity at first, even offering food and lodging. But they couldn’t comprehend his damaged ramblings, and their unease turned into disgust. He had excellent hearing, sharpened by the years of fleeing from heavy footsteps, and so he heard every whisper about him.

“He says he was trained as a physician. But no physician could be as clumsy as that.”

“He must be a fraud, some grifter who hasn’t worked out his con yet.”

“Are we going to wait for him to try and trick us, then? Such a wretched thing; all he does is eat our food...!”

Despite his wounded mind, Boris was not unintelligent. Dragons spoke kindly to him at first when he said he’d studied to be a physician, and grew disgusted with the clumsy way he manipulated his tools. He would be accepted, then, if he were a better physician. If he were...useful. Then the disgust would melt away, and finally the other people would smile.

“I’ll keep practicing,” he promised. Surely then it would be all right.

“I’m still practicing,” he said nervously as he bent over a Guardian’s maw. The great dragon laughed, full of bravado, and Boris’ spirits momentarily lifted. And then the spike of terror, icy-cold, driving through him as the Guardian screamed. He’d made a mistake. There was always a mistake, and he fled in terror—as did the Guardian, blood streaming from his maw.

“I’m still practicing,” he said, his tone decidedly neutral, as he worked on a stoic old Wildclaw. She didn’t say anything when he cracked her fang off, but her eyes rolled sideways, fixing him with a look of sheer hatred. That was when he ran, the tooth still clutched in his pliers.

“I am a practicing physician. A dentist, to be exact,” he said much, much later. He could even speak with confidence now, and the statement wasn’t exactly a lie. He was practicing. Still practicing...

At first it was the patients who ran from him, leaving their extracted teeth in his grasp. Boris was sad at first, but when he realized that these patients weren’t coming after him, he relaxed. He cleaned their left-behind teeth and looked fondly at them, souvenirs of these brief encounters.

It was nice to have people running from him for a change.

The relief of being able to make mistakes without being punished for them was so great that soon, Boris didn’t notice how dragons were actively fleeing from him. They avoided the places where he’d been and spoke of him in fearful whispers.

If he had paid closer attention, he might have noticed that they no longer described him as a Tundra. They spoke of a shadow instead, one with glowing red or green eyes and a wide and shark-fanged smile.

And so Boris was left alone in the wilderness. It was just him and his tools; there were no dragons to bother him...and only the monstrous and the marvelous dared approach him.

~ ~ ~
“What are you?” whispered the living doll with the vacant eyes. Perfume hung around her in an invisible cloud. It would have been fatal to Boris, but he had changed. Nothing could hurt Boris now. Nothing on the outside, anyway.

“I am Boris, a practicing dentist,” he answered. He let her pat his face and twine her porcelain paws into his shaggy mane.

She withdrew her claws with a sigh. “You do not have my eyes. I am looking for my eyes.” And she went away, leaving him alone in the darkness.

Something about that troubled him; he wasn’t sure what it was. He couldn’t really remember. He went his own way, considering it, and then bedded down for the night in an abandoned house.

The scent of rotting flowers awoke him, and he saw a great face peering out from the darkness. “What are you?” hissed the putrid wyrm, as she heaved up through the floorboards. Boris introduced himself and stared, fascinated, at her blood-caked teeth.

“You are a soft thing. You have no strength in you. Your life is not what I seek.” And she sank back down, leaving only a skull atop the earth, like a trapdoor.

Eventually Boris came to blasted patch of forest, where the trees were tangled together like sculptures melted in some great fire. A great thump-thumping shook the ground, and a phantom loomed through the curtains of moss.

“What are you?” growled the boar, his breath stinking of loam. Boris stammered out his explanation and displayed his dental tools.

The boar examined them. He cackled harshly. “You’re no physician,” he growled. “You are as otherworldly and twisted as the rest of us.”

Boris was crushed. He heard only the wry mockery, not the last word the great boar spoke. He slumped dejectedly away as the boar bellowed words in a language he didn’t understand.

Onward he traveled, on and on. He couldn’t quite recall what he was searching for anymore. He hadn’t seen other people for a long time....He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

One afternoon, as golden sunlight shone through the trees, Boris paused in a leafy glade. He wasn’t tired, but rather listening. Something was drawing near.

A being took shape in the sunlight. A Wildclaw, it seemed, but fashioned of pollen and flower petals and clear summer air. His eyes shone like miniature suns.

“Greetings!” Boris said to him. “I am a practicing physician.” And once again he displayed his tools.

“You are no physician,” the creature declared. His voice was ethereal, but with a strange, otherworldly timbre, and for the first time in years, Boris felt unsure.

“No?” he quavered.

“No...You belong in the Garden.”

And that was when they loomed towards him, poking monstrous heads up from the ground, peering around the trunks of trees. The flower-festooned doll searching for her eyes; the wyrm with rotting teeth; and the enormous, moss-covered boar. And more besides, more and more: huge serpents with bark-like skin, things with flowers for faces and vines for limbs.

All leaning expectantly towards him, beckoning towards the Garden.

A rose-faced Skydancer lifted her head. “Join us!” she trilled—and Boris felt his heart soar at that exuberant welcome. “Come stay in the Garden!”

And they extended claws and vines to him, beckoning invitingly.

“I can’t,” Boris objected. “I shouldn’t...” But another memory was rising in him now, a memory of a dream. A dream of warmth and kindness, of being smiled at and welcomed—

--just like this.

Boris stepped into the Garden. The shadows sloughed away from his body, revealing his brightly colored fur. He opened his pink eyes, and at last, he smiled.

~ ~ ~
As the Garden awakened around him, Boris called out, “Attention, everyone! I would like you to meet our new friend.” He produced a box and began unlatching it as the denizens of the Garden gathered around.

“This is Pabit. I finished building him last night. Pabit...don’t be shy. Come out and meet your friends!”

A puppet skittered out of the box. It looked around with glass-bead eyes, staring up at the garden monsters. Nervously, Boris held his breath—

“What a fascinating creation!”

“How wonderful he is!”

“You’ve outdone yourself, Boris; Pabit is an excellent addition...!”

“Thank you, thank you!” Boris gushed. He was as astounded as they were; he had only recently taken up puppet-making, and he’d never thought he had such a talent for it. As a child, he’d never been given the chance to explore his interests. Never been allowed to nurture them and let them bloom....There’d been no time at all. No time.

But as he looked at his creation, and how the Garden beings welcomed it with open vines, he relaxed. His smile gleamed, white and pure, on his bright and joyful face.

Here in this Garden, he had all the time in the world.

~ written by Disillusionist (254672)
all edits by other users









https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG85vYQTID8

black top hat
gladegift halo
beautiful gander
sakura lei
pink wooly coat
mage's sapphire overcoat
blue renaissance shirt
blue breeches
black spats
well to do sable spats
heatherbed lily