The Garden (Spock/Kirk)

iv. Children's Folly

There was something wrong with the sun.

It was too bright -- it hovered low over the Garden, just above the Wall. It had descended while he was sleeping, the air around it burning. He'd been forced away from the Wall, deeper into the jungles of the Garden as it fell from the sky. It was only the second time he had been truly scared since he'd arrived. He was crouching between a tree trunk and a large, leafy bush currently, tremulous and afraid.

The Garden began to hum. It flooded through his body, dissolving rational thought into abstract feeling. Unbridled emotion swallowed him like a wave, pulling him underwater and leaving him unable to breathe. His mind was filled with seawater. Memories began to eddy below the surface.

There had been a man, before the Garden. He couldn't quite place where, but he could see his face. It was indistinct, blurred, like he was watching a reflection dissipate as ripples moved through its features.

A searing pain ripped through his body. He cried out and threw his hands up. For a moment it was if the sun had completely engulfed him, burning him like a leaf in a firestorm.

It was over in an instant. The sun retreated suddenly, casting the sky into shadow. The Garden fell silent.

He desperately grappled to retain the image of the man in his mind, swim closer so he could see his face properly, but he was dissipating fast. The man's mouth opened, and he shouted a name before he disappeared completely;

"Jim!"

When he woke, he knew the man's name. It didn't come to him instantly; he lay there for a while, supine and unmoving, feeling leaves shift and gyrate around him while he pushed into his mind to chase the beginnings of a memory. The trees towered tall above him like glorious sentries.  As he lay, his breathing levelled out and his heart began to thump in time to the Garden's subliminal song. The unheard beat seemed to emanate from the very heart of the Garden itself -- the Wall, and what lay within.

"Spock," he said out aloud, and it excited him. He knew that it was the name of the faceless man he remembered while the sun kissed the vibrant verdure of the Garden. The name tasted sweet on his lips; it exploded into the air and brought with it a shiver of happiness, as if a bright filter had been overlayed on the sights stretched out before him.

"Spock," he said again, and now felt sure that he had known a life before this. How had he gotten to the Garden? Why did this 'Spock' twist so violently in his memory, begging him, praying him to draw a forgotten life to the surface? He felt certain that the answer lay in the humming voice of the Garden as it spoke his name; that it lay in the neat piles of stacked bones he kept finding; that it lay in the centre of the Garden, beyond the Wall.

He pulled himself to his feet, quivering. It reminded him of his first glimpse of his surroundings, when he'd woken up for the first time, drowning in the rain, a little under ten weeks ago now. He'd been fascinated by the wall, then, a fascination which had quickly diminished as he walked circles around it and ended up repeating his steps. It had never occurred to him that he had to find a way over the wall to unlock the answers to his deluge of questions.

The sun had burned him badly; he shook as he tentatively picked his way back toward the Wall. He clung onto the name he'd salvaged from his memory and held it against him. It comforted him, almost. As he lowered himself back to the ground, unable to force himself any further, the Garden hummed back into life once more, and whispered to him. It seemed to be apologising. For what? Was it the one that had called upon the sun to descend and burn him?

[James....]