The Gardener Theme, delighted with the Memory-Orchard, gazed beyond. However, it was not beyond the Body—since there was no outside—but beyond the Body's senses. It was curious about what was beyond the edge.
It extended its tentacles over the World-That-Was's stony hide, towards the juncture of the god's flesh and the void. Eldest tales claimed this was the place where the god stopped dreaming, and where reality transformed into a lifeless dark.
But when the Gardener's senses touched those boundaries, they were not immediate. The stone flesh did not finish abruptly. It sort of broke down. At the very tips—fingers and toes, hair-mountains, and even a stone eyelash drifting in space—the god's solid material was changing into mist, which was thinning into… something else.
It was not nothing. It was like a soup. This very faint, vibration field hummed so quietly that it wasn't really a sound, but the presence itself. The Gardener suddenly understood: Aethelrex's body was not in empty space. It was enveloped in goo, like metaphysical amniotic fluid.
This fluid held echoes, extremely faint, distant, and very old. Not Aethelrex's memories, but someone else's. Other dreamers? Other gods? Other worlds? The echoes were so jumbled that it was impossible to make sense of them. They were feelings: heat that wasn't fire, pressure that wasn't gravity, a color that didn't have a name.
The Body was not alone. It was an island in a sea of other dreams, other deaths.
This was a big blow. The Guardian Theme understood it, though, not frightened of being invaded, but with a new sense of everything. They were not everything. They were just a part, like a cell in some huge, mind-blowing body.
The Scholar Theme (Lucien) was filled with energy and excitement. Information! But in a language beyond their understanding.
The Healer Theme (Bianca) had a sudden feeling of sorrow. Those echoes… some of them were tranquil, while others seemed to be frozen screams. Were they all dead? Were some still dreaming? Was their quiet Beat strange in a world of feasts and famines?
The Bridge Theme, always the translator, was attempting its hardest. It zeroed in on the faintest, most distinct, and clearest of the echoes—a pulse that resembled breathing in and out.
They didn't understand it, but they were able to imitate it. They made their Body's border, at a divine toe, to resemble the same rhythm. Like saying hello.
For a time that could be measured by infinity, nothing took place. Then, the echo changed, if only by a tiny bit. The following signal had a slight change, position of the head maybe, or something else.
Contact.
Not conversation, just seeing each other. Two enormous, sleeping entities, barely touching each other, over a vast and silent ocean. One a healed wound, learning to create. The other… unknown.
Wondering an extra mile, the Gardener Theme kept softly observing the borders. It ceased producing plants and instead started producing new ways to listen. From the rims, it sprouted crystal antennas not for conversing, but to listen more deeply.
Now the white world had an opening. And beyond was a night full of other tales, other silences, and other kinds of hunger. They were not just the caretakers of their own yard anymore. They were a yard, knowing about other yards in the dark.
The feast was not their own thing anymore, it was a way to communicate across the distance. And the first word was a breath.