The Garden Behind His Eyes

The Garden Behind His Eyes

In the real world, Wren was small, quiet, and often overlooked. His hair was always a bit messy, his shoelaces often untied. Grown-ups spoke around him, not to him, and other children at school thought him odd. He didn’t mind, not really. Because Wren had a secret.

Inside his mind, a world bloomed — a world so vast, so rich with color and life, that even Wren sometimes lost track of where imagination ended and reality began.

He called it the Kingdom of Wren.

It was a place where mountains floated in the sky and rivers ran with liquid stardust. Great creatures roamed freely: lions with wings, turtles the size of houses, and tiny, glowing foxes that whispered forgotten dreams into your ear if you listened close enough.

Wren ruled the Kingdom not as a king of iron and law, but as a dreamer — weaving stories into the very fabric of the world. Towers bent like trees, oceans sang lullabies, and forests shifted according to his mood.

But lately, something was changing.

At school, the whispers were louder. *"Weird kid." "Space cadet."* Even teachers grew impatient when Wren’s eyes drifted to the window, chasing thoughts far more thrilling than spelling tests and multiplication tables.

At home, the shouting between his parents shook the walls. Wren would pull his blanket tighter around him at night, shutting his eyes and running, running to the Kingdom where the sky was always a soft gold, and the trees hummed songs of safety.

But cracks began to form there too.

One morning, as Wren stepped through the familiar portal—a shimmering arch of ivy near his backyard tree—he noticed something: the stars in the river had dimmed. The floating mountains sagged, losing their glow. The foxes whispered not dreams, but fears.

*"Why are you here?"* they asked, their tiny voices quivering.

*"Aren't you tired?"*

*"Maybe you don't belong even here."*

Wren stumbled back, confused. The Kingdom had always been a place of refuge. Now it felt... uncertain. Fragile.

He wandered through the gray woods, calling out to the creatures he loved. No answer came.

At the heart of the Kingdom stood the Dreamtree, a colossal tree whose roots cradled the world and whose branches held up the stars. Wren had always visited it when he was sad, sitting in its shade and feeling his worries lift like autumn leaves in the wind.

But now, the Dreamtree was dying. Its bark cracked and wept sap like tears. Its leaves had turned to ash.

Sitting at its base was a figure — a boy, small and messy-haired, looking very much like Wren himself, but somehow... heavier, burdened.

"Who are you?" Wren asked, his voice barely a whisper.

The boy looked up, eyes rimmed with sorrow. "I'm you," he said simply. "The part of you that hurts."

Wren sat down beside him. For a while, neither spoke.

Finally, Wren asked, "Why is everything falling apart?"

The boy — the other Wren — gave a sad smile. "Because you keep pushing the hurt away. You pretend it’s not there. But even here, in your Kingdom, pain grows if you don’t face it."

Wren wanted to argue, to deny it. But the memories pressed in: the cold shoulders at school, the fights at home, the lonely ache that no adventure, no daydream, could completely erase.

Tears blurred his vision. "I don't know what to do," he said.

The other Wren reached out and took his hand. "You don't have to know. You just have to feel it. Let yourself be sad. Let yourself be angry. Let yourself be real."

And so, Wren cried. In the Kingdom of Wren, beneath the dying Dreamtree, he let the dam break. He wept for the fights he couldn’t stop, for the friends he didn’t have, for the loneliness he wore like an invisible coat.

As his tears fell, something extraordinary happened.

The ground soaked up his sorrow like rain after a drought. The Dreamtree shivered, then began to glow faintly. New leaves, small and trembling, sprouted along its branches. The rivers caught fire with starlight again, brighter than before. The mountains rose, buoyed by unseen winds.

And the foxes? They returned, but their whispers were different now.

*"You are brave."*

*"You are not alone."*

*"You are enough."*

The other Wren stood, smiling through his own tears. He wasn’t heavy anymore. He was lighter, freer. He stepped into Wren, merging with him, making him whole again.

When Wren opened his eyes, he was back under his backyard tree. The sun was setting, painting the world in hues of fire and lavender.

For the first time, he didn’t run from the ache in his chest. He let it be there. He didn’t need to pretend he was unbreakable. He knew now: even broken things could grow.

And the Kingdom of Wren? It would always be there — not as an escape, but as a testament to the magic of feeling everything, even the hard things.

Because inside his mind, and inside his heart, he had planted something that would never die.

Hope.