Link to article: Where the Garden Began.
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[[>]] [[module Rate]] [[/>]] It woke up in a field as dawn broke and looked around it. It wasn't impressed by what it saw. The field was... just a field. Not even just a field. It was a monotony of ugly, yellow-gray grass, snarling and tangling around itself. There was no value here, nothing but- But there //was// something, right there at its feet. In the weak gray light, there was a flower. Quite an interesting little thing too, and unusually colored. A smooth dark chocolate shot through with streaks of deep crimson. It would be a rare bloom, if there were actually any other blooms around. As it stood, the little thing was unique. Did the flower just move a bit? Just then? No? Yes. Probably following the sun that was already beginning its slow climb. Then there was another flower, it saw. Just a little ways away. It pushed through the ground and bloomed into something just as unique as the first one. It looked up more and saw petals unfurling everywhere in the field! They were growing straight and proud, above the old gray grass that clung to the stems. The sun was just far enough up to lend some warmth to the field, but it wasn't just a field anymore. In the new light, wild flowers dotting the plain, it was a garden. It was a garden. Yes, it was a garden, and with the garden came gardeners. There weren't many at first, but they hacked away the grass with speed, coaxing new flowers out into this little world. It wandered among them, they who had their backs bent, working as feverishly with their flowers as any bee did. More gardeners came. Of course they came. It was quite a big field. In the cool lemon light of the morning, the gardeners came and they created. This was the time for wild growth, it remembered later. It looked around at the flowers the gardeners made. They were enormous, beautiful, extravagant. The world burst open with unrestrained color. All of the gardeners ran around, letting the blooms grow together, creating more and more. There were no set plots, no boundaries. They all competed to grow the biggest, the most exotic, all twining in and out and around each other. There wasn't much pruning, it noticed. They all just added their own absurd gaudy flowers to the mix and left them for the next. But flowers wilt, oh yes they do. The sun got higher, and the light became harsher. That muted shine that softened edges got brighter, and made the beautiful colors clash. The heat rose. Those glossy petals lost their vibrance, and the stems sagged, weakened, as everything that supported them leeched away. It saw the gardeners realize what had happened, and it watched them scramble. For a short time they tried to keep things as they were. There were things that could be done with wilted flowers. But there were just too many, and they started pulling each other down, all those that they were entwined with. The first gardeners and the best gardeners, they tried to prune as they went, but there were so many others now, making more and more pastel blooms that withered when they left. Finally, those first gardeners and best gardeners gave up being subtle. It watched as everyone else was pushed away for awhile, and the endless trimming began. Those gardeners cut away the dead, the gaudy, the parasites. The primal jungle of color was tamed, and so much was taken away. It was sad at this. The garden looked more like a field again. Only the most unique, or the ones that they worked so hard to preserve, were allowed to continue. The gardeners returned to something very different than what they had left. What was there in a garden, that wasn't a flower? What would they do now? That was when they got interested in the thorns, and the vines, and the leaves. These new gardeners in this new world worked in new ways. They still coaxed a flower out, but it was just a spark of color in the real attraction. They wove the stalks in and out and around, moved leaves with painstaking care. They created strange and wonderful sculptures that lived around their blooms. They met its approval. This wasn't the world of beautiful chaos that it had seen before. There was pruning, always. There were plots where every plant was shaped. Only the very best were allowed to twine and create something even more beautiful than anything on its own. Gardeners of the morning school were gently or forcibly nudged away. Flowers weren't enough anymore. That's not to say that there were no flowers. A few extravagant blooms survived from the morning, but they were beginning to wilt away. Because flowers wilt, the gardeners knew that very well. That's why they dealt in thorns now. It walked around this new garden, as the sun began to reach its zenith. It was unheeded by the busy gardeners working in the heat. It marveled at the complex world that had come out of the old field, until it stopped at a flower. This flower was untouched. Some things grew around it, but it was never touched. The gardeners had saved it, or forgotten about it. It had no idea which. Of course, when it looked around at the complex plants that now grew here, the little thing looked like nothing special. Of course it was where all of this had begun, but it was just a little brown and red flower now. Wasn't it? Brown and red. Red and brown. Blood and shit. In the bright light of the sun. It looked around. Nobody ever paid attention to it, it would probably be totally fine if it just reached down and //Pluck.// [[size 0%]] He was searching for someone, across all the pages on the wiki. [[/size]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]