orbit of the forgotten

Somewhere, far beyond Earth’s sun, lies a planet untouched by time. It circles a soft lavender star in the quiet solitude of the sixth spiral arm of a forgotten galaxy. The planet has no name spoken aloud, though the winds that ripple its endless fields whisper a word older than memory: Elserin.


On Elserin, there are no cities. No machines. No war. Only silence, flowers, and echoes.


The planet is a garden—a celestial bloom drifting through space. From space, it looks like a blue and gold marble, but when you step onto its soil, you see it is covered from pole to pole in flowers: towering silver tulips with petals like glass, cobalt vines that hum faintly when touched, and blossoms that glow with warmth under moonlight. Their fragrances linger in the air like memories. But no people live among them now.


No one, except for her.


She was called Solenne. And she had no memory of Earth. Her arrival was the last act of a dying spacecraft that had carried her across galaxies while she slept for centuries in frozen solitude. A forgotten passenger on a forgotten mission. The ship had broken apart in orbit, scattering metal and fire into Elserin’s skies. She fell like a star and woke among the flowers.


The planet welcomed her.


The flowers leaned toward her when she walked. The wind carried melodies that echoed her thoughts. Even the sky seemed to pulse with something ancient and kind. Yet there were no humans. No answers.


Solenne wandered the fields for weeks, then months. She built a small hut of woven vinewood near the Sea of Petals, a place where the breeze stirred the blossoms into waves. Every morning, she would walk among them, tracing spirals in the soil with her feet, breathing in their scents, waiting for the loneliness to lessen.


One day, she found the first statue.


It was half-buried in a field of scarlet bloomlights—massive, daisy-like plants that opened only in the presence of grief. The statue was of a child, eyes closed, arms raised toward the sky. Around its base were carvings—thousands of names in a language she couldn’t read.


In the days that followed, Solenne found more statues. A mother cradling an invisible baby. Two lovers mid-embrace, faces soft with longing. An old man with a telescope, gazing skyward forever. Each surrounded by flowers that only bloomed when she cried.


And cry she did.


Not just for the statues or their unspoken stories—but for herself. For the life she never knew, the Earth she would never return to, the voices she would never hear. Her tears watered the soil, and wherever they fell, strange new flowers grew: star-shaped, violet, and trembling with light.


She began to understand then.


Elserin was not a garden for the living. It was a sanctuary for the forgotten—souls, names, hopes, and dreams cast into the abyss of time. Lost astronauts. Abandoned colonists. Memoryless AIs. Creatures who had once loved, laughed, feared. All gone now, but not erased.


The planet remembered them. The flowers were not just flowers. They were echoes—emotions embedded into root and petal, pressed like letters into paper. Each bloom held a story.


Solenne stopped walking then. She began listening.


She would lie among the flowers for hours, her cheek against warm soil, hearing the stories the wind carried. Stories of a girl who sang to the stars, a boy who built wings from dreams, an old scientist who died with the taste of hope on his tongue. The more she listened, the less alone she felt.


Years passed. She did not age—Elserin did not allow it. It was not a world that followed time’s rules.


She began to sculpt.


Not with stone, but with seeds.


She planted gardens in shapes: spirals, galaxies, lullabies, handprints. Entire fields in the form of sleeping children or weeping lovers. And around each, she whispered stories back into the wind.


And the wind whispered back.


One night, under a sky rippling with five moons and drifting lights, she asked the wind: “Why me?”


The answer came not in words, but in feeling—like the warmth of a mother’s hug, the breath of a lover’s sigh, the weight of a goodbye that was never said.


Because she remembered.


That was her purpose.


To remember.


To be the orbit of the forgotten.


The next morning, something had changed. In the distance, across the River of Blossoms, a new flower had bloomed. It was the size of a house, pale and translucent, and as she approached, she realized it wasn’t a flower at all—but a door. A gate woven of light and petals.


She stepped closer, heart aching.


Inside the glowing frame, she saw visions: people walking on a distant world, laughing, living, loving. A city by the sea. Children with her eyes. mini versions of her own self. A name she had forgotten—spoken gently, like a prayer. Earth.


But the flowers around her rustled. The statues watched with silent eyes. The wind held its breath.


She had a choice.


Go back. Be Solenne again.


Or stay.


The decision crushed her like gravity.


She turned from the door. She fell to her knees and placed her palm on a new patch of earth. And she cried—not from sorrow, but from love.


The door faded. In its place grew a single flower—gold, with petals shaped like stars.


It whispered her story.


Now she walks still, in that eternal field under the lavender sun, weaving memories into petals. Every once in a while, a new flower blooms where none had before—a life lost in the void, found again in her orbit.


And in the silence, she is never alone.


Because Elserin remembers.


Because Solenne remembers.


Because someone must.


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