Writetober 2025, Coven of the Quill, Day 12: The Garden of the Second Sun

 My therapist called it "cognitive architecture," a coping mechanism designed to give my overanxious mind a focus point. I called it The Garden of the Second Sun, an impossibly detailed mental space I had constructed piece by piece over seven years of sleepless nights. It was the only place I could go to turn off the constant, low-frequency hum of my own internal dread.

For me, the Garden was a ritual. To enter, I had to mentally recite a completely made-up language I called Glimmer-Speak. It was a sequence of sounds designed to be phonetically impossible for any real language: all lateral clicks, alveolar trills, and soft vowels. The sounds themselves were meaningless. Perfect.

I started every night the same way. Lying still, heart rate dropping, I would begin the slow, mental recitation: "Lih-thael... Rrsh-kla... Chw-ah-sae..."

The instant the third sound, the Chw-ah-sae, was completed, the transition would occur. My small, dark bedroom would fade, replaced by the perpetual twilight of the Garden. The air smelled of pollen and ozone. I was safe.

For years, it worked. The Garden was a place where my fears—the sudden job loss and the slow, inevitable creep of my mother’s illness—had no validity.

But about two weeks ago, the first subtle anomaly occurred.

I was inspecting the Whispering Cypress, a tree in the center of the Garden that radiated a soft, violet light. I spoke the Glimmer-Speak sequence: "Vael-niss-chael..."—the mental command to make a new path appear in the overgrown sod.

And then, I heard it.

A sound that was not my own thoughts, and not my own voice, but a high-pitched whisper that answered the command. It was directly behind me, close enough that I felt a puff of cold air on the back of my neck.

"Vael-niss-chael."

It was the same Glimmer-Speak. It was the correct sound, perfectly enunciated, with the exact emphasis I had always intended for it.

I froze, heart slamming against my ribs. I was alone. I was in bed. This was my mind. I quickly recited the exit phrase—"Zeh-kah-lih—and my room snapped back into existence. I was sweating, the sound echoing in the silence. It had to be a hallucination brought on by fatigue.

The next night, I was more careful. I kept each of my commands quick. I made it to the second word before I heard the response.

It wasn't a whisper this time. It was a resonant voice that completed the loop with me.

"...sae. Nae-lo. Sii-veth. Ahk-tess. Reah-zae. Goh-lun."

My own language, spoken by a stranger. I spoke the exit command instantly, scrambling to sit up in the dark.

This was a dialogue. Someone, or something, was on the other side of my mental firewall, listening, learning, and now speaking my private tongue.

On the third night, I did the unthinkable. I stayed in the Garden.

I had entered, my heart pounding a panicked drumbeat against the ethereal silence of the twilight world. I stood by the Cypress and waited.

For a long minute, there was nothing. Then, a deliberate sound from the darkness beneath the great, purple roots of the tree.

"Lih-thael," the voice said like a child trying out a new toy.

I felt a coldness spread through my chest. I answered, using a sound I knew meant "Wait," or "Stop."

"Chae-roh-na."

The voice paused, then offered a series of sounds I had never mentally invented. They were new, intricate, and instantly comprehensible. The structure of Glimmer-Speak was such that certain sounds could only mean certain things. These new words, woven together, had a clear, terrible meaning.

"The architect is present. The architecture is sound. Show me the design's flaw."

I stumbled backward onto the mossy, violet ground. It was asking for the weakness of my own mind. My sanctuary was now a trap, and the thing in the shadows was the new gardener.

I looked down at the soft, glowing moss beneath me. I reached out a trembling hand and pushed it away, revealing the dirt underneath. I realized I was not looking at the dirt. I was looking at the thin, dusty carpet of my small, dark bedroom.

I was no longer safely in the Garden. The Garden was now safely in me. And the Watcher was already inside.

I didn't exit. I couldn't.

written by Zoe