The garden didn't question them. It simply welcomed them back.
The stone archway framed their return with moss and drooping flowers. Glowshrooms pulsed gently along the path, as if exhaling. The air here was warmer than outside the walls—subtly alive with humming soil, dew-slicked roots, and something unseen. It smelled of leaf tea and cracked earth after rain.
Neither Elliot nor Lyra spoke at first. Their hands brushed as they walked, not quite holding. The silence wasn't awkward—it was full.
Near the old hearthroot patch, a cluster of sentiblooms swayed toward them, petals half-open. One of them gave a faint chime. Lyra crouched down beside it, resting her palm softly near its stem.
"They missed you," Elliot said.
"I wasn't sure I'd be welcome back."
"You were never gone from this place," he replied. "Not really."
She smiled, though her eyes were tired. The leaves behind her shimmered slightly in response.
In their absence, the garden had grown—subtly, but certainly. The buffblooms near the eastern fence had doubled, their pollen richer. New hearthroot trails had branched toward the gathering well, drawing warmth closer to where people often sat at night.
Most notably, something strange had grown beside the mushroom shed.
It looked like a tangle of thornlash vines—except calmer, more deliberate. Their pattern didn't strike outward in chaos like usual, but twisted in slow spirals around a single tall stalk. At the top bloomed a wide, gold-tipped flower neither of them recognized.
"…Did you plant that?" Lyra asked.
Elliot shook his head. "No. It must've… grown itself?"
"Or grown for something," she murmured, standing.
They circled it carefully, noting that glowshrooms had clustered around its base as if drawn to it. The soil beneath it was strangely soft, yet firm enough to stand on.
Elliot knelt and brushed the base. "Still warm. It's… alive. In a way I don't think any of our plants have been before."
"I think it's a reaction," Lyra whispered. "To the world outside. The garden listened. It always does."
The gold bloom bent slightly, just as she finished speaking.
They named it Listening Root.
Later that day, they sat near the garden's heart again, on the bench Elliot had carved from a fallen tree. They watched the wind ripple across a row of clearberries. No voices. Just shared breath, and the creak of wood settling.
"I'm still not sure what I am," Lyra said softly, breaking the quiet.
He turned toward her but didn't interrupt.
"I mean—yes, I remember now. How I came to be. That I was grown, not born. That my thoughts were... designed, maybe, at first. But I feel things. I choose now. Isn't that what matters?"
"It is," Elliot said. "If you're asking if you're real, the answer is yes. I've never met anyone more real."
Her fingers curled slightly around the edge of the bench. "And if I forget again?"
"Then I'll remind you. As many times as it takes."
They sat in stillness again, the warmth of the hearthroots seeping up from below.
That evening, they held a gathering—not a meeting, not a council, just a fire and food and space to speak. The others came slowly, shyly. Mira brought dried seedcakes. Old Ramel showed off a small wooden fox he'd carved. Nia sang a song no one had heard before, in a language none of them spoke, and it made even the sentiblooms sigh.
No one mentioned the broken places. Not directly. But they laughed louder than usual. And when Lyra took Mira's hand to dance in the firelight, no one questioned it. The flames cast soft gold on her skin, her silver hair glowing like mist.
Elliot watched her from the side of the gathering, a bowl of root stew in his lap. He wasn't smiling, exactly—but his shoulders were looser, his breathing even. Like he had remembered how to be part of the world again.
When Lyra returned to sit beside him, he looked at her bowl—empty already.
"Fast."
"I'm still catching up," she grinned. "Apparently being half-plant doesn't mean you don't get hungry."
He laughed. "Fair enough."
Above them, stars pricked the sky.
Beneath them, the garden whispered through its roots.