The Complete Garden

She sits in The Complete Garden with the stars singing out the names she had given them above her. Around her, trails bend and weave, quartering grass into discrete, endless segments. Within this fertile, contained, expansive space, dozens of communities thrive. She sits apart. Here, a few friends plant future promises, delving hands deep into the warm soil, a mutual handshake that's been going on for millennia. There, a loosely defined pack of people hover around a clearly defined group of dogs, brought together by their need of ritual, of shared similarity. Smiling, these things wash over her as she waits for him. They would have washed over her anyway; her lack of motion is not subservience, not a change in routine in favor of a stronger other. It is simply an augmentation, like so much of her life has become now that she had him. Calmly, her days flexed, familiar time stamps and footmaps expanding to encompass this new thing that was coming to life between them. For now, The Complete Garden held her hand and pulsed with her breaths, expanding with the smell of evening citrus and contracting with a soft, cool, autumn breeze.

Above her, the stars sing the names she had given them. A whirl of constellations, a blizzard of choirs, their silver voices dance among the trees and their rough, welcome barks. At times, she paces, circumnavigating The Complete Garden with familiar ease. Of course, inevitably, the question creeps into her mind: "what makes this The Complete Garden?". She knows that the very nature of the question is futile, its motivations moot and sterile from birth. However, the machinations of asking questions, the settling of mental muscles into well-worn, cerebral grooves, attracts her. It was she, after all, who had named this place The Complete Garden (silut in the magical intonations that made up her personal, universal dictionary). That day was not much different than today except that the sense of wholeness had not yet settled upon the place, reaching supporting hands to give The Garden its own, prehensile abilities.

Was that it? Was this The Complete Garden because it reached out to its visitants, not content with staying passive like its other, tellurian sisters? Perhaps. The idea certainly had its attractive symmetry but the fact remained that whatever responsiveness The Complete Garden now possessed had come after the naming and, thus, could not be its motivation. Such simple laws of causation still stood in The City, although for how long none could tell. Her brow furrows slightly at the idea and at the implicit, subtle, accusing finger pointing from inside of it. After all, was her naming not often in defiance of other rules The City held as fundamental? Did she not break the precious real with her very voice, every syllable uttered against the tapestry of understandings that made up the corpus of contracts called The City (a city)?

Perhaps but what did that matter in the face of such beauty? Furrows now gone, her face lights up in a smile as she notices the children at play, more infinite fields unfolding in their minds than any Complete Garden could ever hope to contain. Her eyes wander across the multiple ponds The Complete Garden contains, waters reflecting the astral litany being sung from above. She wonders how, with their sharp hearts and emphatic relationships, her fellow sojourners in The Complete Garden cannot hear their melody. She could change that of course, she knows, with but a few names sprinkled here and there. But the warm itch across her shoulders which signifies such an event is not upon her and she has learned to trust her body with these things. After all, were not the tongue and the heart which did the naming a part of the body? Most assuredly. And besides, he was coming and her new rhythm urged her to conserve her strength.

She had never taken him to The Complete Garden before today. In some ways, The Garden was her place, an island where her work flowed most vividly. The entity which was The Garden now, having been named, felt so close, so familiar, that she hesitated to share it with any others. This thought brought another assault of furrows; it was not in her nature to hoard. Even when she worked the Orange Market she was forthcoming and welcoming, traits that were among the most precious resources in a market offering everything except decency. In that regard, The Complete Garden was perhaps the opposite of the Market and, alongside her own abode, her own fortress of shadows, was where she felt most at home in The City. That was, she knew, not a feat to be disregarded. The body urbane was home to many castaways, shunted off from the main flow of things by their own aberrations, their own rhythmic inconsistencies. Staying with the community was a balancing act of firmness and suppleness, a give and take of everyday life which could determine your fate for years to come.

And now, she was bringing someone into one of her modal cores, a thrumming beat at the heart of the percussive symphony that was her personality. That was dangerous, for everyone, but doubly so for a Namer. For what are Names if not specific cadences, spoken by tongue and heart in measured signatures? The furrows increase; perhaps this was a mistake. She once again looks around her and feels the warmth exuding from every bend of trail, every cry of play, every soft, murmured, constant humdrum of small community and she is suddenly not sure if she wants to share all of this with him. A bench presents itself at the right time, buckling slightly beneath her weight, burdened as it is by by-now dire contemplation, and she takes it without noticing. The smell of eucalyptus increases around her. Her hands are drumming against the wood, a hollow cadence that rings out only around her but where it is heard, leaves no thing the same.

Which is, of course, her answer. She is not the cadence, nor the fingers drumming. She is not the warmth of The Complete Garden nor is she The Garden itself. She is not the stars, whirling in their dervish dances in the sky, crying out their names. She is not the hands going into the dirt, welcomed warmly back to a contract signed by her ancestors. She is not the small community, nor the humdrum, nor the children at play. She is not even the bending paths, the trails carved into The Complete Garden, segmenting it into discrete parts. She is not, of course, the trees and their ugly, welcome bark or the shade beneath their leaves or their smells, so comforting to aching minds. She is not him or her or a floating piece of rhythm against a common stream of stage directions called society. Nor is she, indeed, the totality of this and its meaning, she is not, after all, The City.

No. She is the wood. She is the substance against which all of this strikes and drums and the Names are the beautiful music born between those things, sweet music born of conflict and meeting. And that gives her no small measure of freedom. The furrows are gone. She sits back in the bench, comfortably ensconced by its structure as only the body can ensconce the self, perfectly fitting and yet not at all there. She is the wood and suddenly he is there and his arms drum against her skin as he greets her and she smiles.

"Hey. I'm Elhar. I believe we've never met before, although you might remember otherwise. Will you walk with me in The Complete Garden and tell me who I am?" "Hey Elhar. I named you, so I feel slightly affronted, but certainly, I will walk with you. But how will I know who you are and how will I tell you when I know?" "Oh, don't worry. I'll tell you when".