Chapter Text
I want to keep a garden, said Im, and made of themself a god.
Once upon an ancient age, there was a world that was made to be a home. The seas were sweet and blue and held no terrors, then, and the sun was always warm.
Its god was young, then, or young as gods can ever be, with their bones of promises and love, and this god called itself Im, and it was made of love for butterflies and wonder for the stars.
I wish to keep a garden, said Im, and pulled the weeds wherever they grew, killed the bees that wandered in. They were a clever, cautious sort of god, and they knew to be wary of outsiders, of disruptions to their order. Of strangers.
It wasn’t until the walls began to rise that the world grew unsettled. Unease, slow and inexorable, crept into its valleys and salt plains, capped its waves with white as they rose to pound and wash against the new-laid bricks.
Calm, Im said, slipping fingers through the sands and tides, and the waves calmed, for a moment. It’s nothing hurtful. It’s a safe haven, against any problems that might seek to hurt us. It’s a home.
The waves never receded. They clawed at the walls, pulled the mortar to powder, swallowed the bricks one by one over the course of years.
The next time, Im built higher.
I will keep a garden, Im said, and raised a greenhouse to keep the world out. The butterflies fluttered picturesque through warm air beneath walls of glass, alighting now and then on perfectly cropped grass and never-wilting flowers and the tines of Im’s crown, and no rain fell.
And outside and far below, the grieving oceans raged and wept, and monsters woke in their depths and crawled upon their shores, and the jungles grew dense, and the storms went mad, and the paradise world grew wild.
I will keep a garden, Im said, and built for themself a cage.