The Uneasy Garden

De: Darlene Zagata

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The world unfolded in layers of vibrant impossibility. Emerald forests kissed skies of cerulean and crimson, while crystalline rivers snaked through valleys teeming with flora and fauna unlike any that had graced old Earth. For the humans, transplanted generations ago with a hazy ancestral memory of a lost home, this world was simply theirs. They had built their villages, their societies, their lives within its lush embrace, alongside the stoic, adaptable humanoids who shared the varied landscapes.

The animals roamed in bewildering diversity, from feathered serpents that sang melodic calls to lumbering, six-legged herbivores that grazed in the shimmering plains. Even the plant life pulsed with an alien energy, its cycles and secrets still largely unknown. It was a tapestry of life, woven with threads from a thousand different looms, all thriving in a symphony orchestrated by unseen hands.

Unseen, but not entirely absent. Whispers persisted in the oldest human legends – tales of the "Gardeners," beings of immense power who had seeded this world. These were relegated to myth, bedtime stories to explain the inexplicable wonders around them. Until the whispers began to coalesce into something tangible, something undeniable. A shard of metal unearthed in an ancient ruin. A series of cryptic symbols etched into a cave wall. The silent, watchful gaze of figures who seemed to belong and yet not belong to this vibrant ecosystem.

The truth, when it finally bloomed, was a poisonous flower. This world, this paradise they called home, was not a natural genesis. They were not children of this soil, but specimens in a grand, unknowable experiment. And the Gardeners, their creators, were still watching.