Unrecognized

She was shaped by the shifting earth, her features sculpted and statuesque, established from dust and ash of a world determined to burn. She stood at the edge of the garden and stared at the flourishes of snaking vines and succulent blooms, striking shades congregate in her sight. She is of the land and for days she tends to its needs.

After sundown, the moon escaped the sky and the stark night exposed a creature made only of ashes. His travels brought him from somewhere else in the landscape gardens. He stood before her and the world she’d tended to and stared at the flourishes of snaking vines and succulent blooms. The striking shades congregated in his sight, but he assumed they were his and that he was not of them. She spoke of her reserve of the scenery, the prospering species she had come to know, and she asked that he support the serenity she nourished. He agreed, should she surrender to him completely. She denied and called out in anguish to which she was punished.

By force, she was cast out of the gardens she had cherished and sustained and was restricted to darkness. But the flowers did not forget her, the vines twisted in the pains of the loss, and the fruits went bitter in her absence. The creatures longed for her and many a night the birds would screech, and fellow snakes would hiss for her return.

Alone in the gardens, he saw the misery of the land he had neglected and desired assistance. Without her, he knew not of fixes for the soil, shore, shrubbery and beasts that asked for attention and aid. And so he turned inward and wrenched from the forms that surrounded his heart, a small part of himself he could spare. Secondary ashes created her. She was the broken parts of him, but she would act as he instructed. And when he said she was to save the flower beds and falling vines she worked blindly to obey and rescue. But as she worked, the animals stewed as their resources diminished. They were merely surviving, but he neglected them, and she couldn’t see the cost of carelessness.

She spent a day reaping what was sown long ago, but a certain serpent approached her as she sifted the soil. The snake insisted that she savour the flavour of the low hanging fruit of a seedling that had sprung to provide sweet spheres for tasting. The serpent sang of the secrets she would see after a sampling.

“If the suggestion suits you, and the sights you see after the snack show the truths of our surroundings, I suggest you share your smartened senses.”

She separated the fruit from its stem and sank her teeth into its skin. The fruit was sour from negligence, but the taste exposed the suffering conditions of the homestead in which the serpent stayed. Wordless to the snake, she left to search for him. She pressed that he seek the same reality with a taste of the selected harvest. He tried the fruit and suddenly saw the slaughter of the setting he had once stolen. His eyes had been shielded by laziness and his attempts at exercising power. Now the land before him burned and all together, they fell.