.

A/N: Me is back! Yay! Hugs and unicorn-puppy hybrids all around.

If anyone knows good, completed fanfiction, please tell me? Pretty, pretty, please? Specifics on my profile. Please? Just click the little blue button saying Illyessa Fa Carnet and I'll love you forever. This thing is almost routine by now.

Enjoy!


Here in this garden of metal birds and metal skies and metal plants, where there are no weeds and no clouds, there are some who say that they still can remember where all these strange, beautiful freaks of nature came from.

Here in this garden of metal silk and metal rain and metal fire, where the sun is always shining, there are some who say they can still remember where the metal cornflowers came from.

They say, that these blue flowers of living metal are the color of someone's eyes, some girl who lived long, long, ago.

Some girl with such special, lovely blue eyes, some girl who danced in the grasses and sunlight, with compassion in her eyes and a smiles wherever she went. Some special girl, they say, that lived so well, and died too soon. Some girl, they say that became the most loved duchess the world would ever see, some girl so special that when she died, her siblings immortalized her in metal orchids and geraniums. They say that even the sun loved her, keeping the garden lit morning and night for her.

Some girl who held such a place in their hearts, and when she left, left it empty, cold.

They say, that in this garden of living metal, there are three siblings, one greener than grass, one grayer than storm, one golden as fire. Three siblings no longer human, for they gave up their humanity to tend to these cornflowers, to tend to the memory of their sister. So special she and they must be, for such selfless, determined devotion. So strange they also must be, and powerful, to create something like these flowers.

Sometimes, some say, these three siblings rouse enough out of their dreams to speak to those in the garden.

One girl who visited this famed garden, with eyes almost as blue as the cornflowers, remembers the sad, ever-knowing, almost deranged, looks on their faces as they had grasped her shoulders and stared into her face, looking intently at her eyes. A look that haunts her nightmares, now and forever. Such a searching, desperate, look, she says.

Their hands felt like water, she says. Like molten silk, like the tips of wheat.

Their hands felt like death, she doesn't say.

One novice of some temple, a child prodigy with thread-magic, remembers the hopeful smile on Golden One's face when she had passed her on her way to a clump of cornflowers, and then the frown of such searing disappointment after a moment.

Such sorrow, some say, should never be felt by any one, she says.

Their smile was mad, she doesn't say.

They wonder what might have happened, those who visit that garden.

A special girl she must have been.

A very special girl.


Sometimes, two old women and a man will come here, with others, younger, but still very old. They are all mages from someplace called Winding Circle, a thread-mage, a dance-mage, a stone-mage, a green-mage, a carpenter-mage.

The the others in the garden have always wondered who they were, these people that come so often and try to tug the Tenders of the metal flowers out of the garden.

At the beginning, one of the women had tried to force the Tenders out of their garden. But stay they did, though some whispers carry mention of that woman being a Rosethorn, someone the whispers would never have dared defy. These Tenders must have been powerful, wonderful, people, to stop The Rosethorn.

But spikes can't hurt when there is nothing to feel.

But now, all those mages do is walk in the garden, smelling the sweet, metallic, scent of the cornflowers. Sometimes they talk among themselves, shaking their heads in sorrow.

Once, when the Green One passed by, they tried to talk to Him, but he passed them by, with that blank, vacant stare He always has when He is not with Them, tending the cornflowers and tilling the soil, shifting them again and again, until they are flat and perfectly smooth..

Once, when the Grey One was watering the metal flowers, they tried to block Her, trying to do something, anything to interrupt Her, to make her listen to them, to notice them for a second, to make Her do anything but stare at them absently with that vacant glance full of nothing, nothing, nothing. But nothing will ever work, it seems, and She went on, calling the rain down in showers, oblivious to everything but tending to the cornflowers and the rivulets of rain slowly dripping down her cheeks.

When there is nothing important to notice, you notice nothing.

And so now they have given up, and walk silently in the gardens, so sad always, so sad. They stroke the petals of the cornflowers, sometimes placing gifts near the entrance when they leave, though no one knows why, because they just lie there, undisturbed, until someone steals them.

Those in the gardens would wonder who those people were, to be so sad among such marvelous flowers.

Here in this garden, there was nothing to be sad about, they say. The flowers are so beautiful, they say. The flowers are so beautiful.


Here in this garden of metal cornflowers, there are some who say that they still can remember where these strange beautiful freaks of nature came from.

They say, that these blue flowers of living metals are the color of someone's eyes, some girl alive long, long, ago. Some girl with such special, lovely blue eyes, some girl who danced in the grasses and sunlight, with compassion in her eyes, and fear, always hidden, of the darkness. Some special girl, they say, that lived so well, and died too soon. Some girl, they say that became the most loved duchess the world would ever see, some girl so special that when she died, her siblings immortalized her in metal roses and dandelions.

They say, that in this garden of living metal, there are three siblings, one green as grass, one grey as storm, one golden as fire. Three siblings no longer human, for they gave up their humanity to tend to these cornflowers, to tend to the memory of their sister. So special she and they must be, for such devotion.

The flowers are beautiful, the silk and sky and rain are all so lovely, they say.

Go see their beauty yourself, they say. Nothing and no one can match them, they say.

It is worth all the gold in the world, they say. It is worth all the diamonds and coins and jewelry in the world, they say.

I will never go there again, they don't say.