after the flower found the creature, something new began to grow.
not a forest.
not a garden as we know it.
a place without a name, suspended somewhere between heaven and the world below.
the creature remained there.
its body had changed, and so had the darkness around it. roots began to appear where there had been nothing. blue flowers opened in the shadows. vines reached into the air as if searching for something beyond the veil.
and the creature was the first to understand that this place was alive.
so it stayed.
it became its keeper.
the first guardian of the first garden.
nothing was allowed to enter without being changed by it. nothing was allowed to leave without carrying a piece of it away.
the creature did not know what the garden would become.
it only knew that something was coming.
something that would bloom there.
something that would eventually grow teeth.
Custos Liminis.
the keeper of the threshold.
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