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The Palace’s flowers bent as Pollen drifted her paws at their soft petals. So much of her home’s inner working ran with minute perfection- never did she need to water them, refill their pots or give them feed, but it gave her comfort in that she was doing something potentially good for the whole of those who lived with her.

Except, she hadn’t felt like doing that lately. Scrapes and bruises were evidence of what she had been pushing herself to, cuts that she barely remembered receiving. The dull ache of memory ate at her mind. She should remember, right? Something about the vines that grew deeper every day into her skin, pushing herself to exhaustion to the point she felt it the next morning, faint spots of blood that budded across her chest from a lash of a limb- it all accumulated into a ball of fog that felt too dense to pry into. If she tried, a sense of wrong took over her. It wasn’t a chaotic sort of feeling; she knew what Chaos felt like. This was her own head fighting her, fighting to let her forget.

That wasn’t what haunted her the most. No, it wasn’t the strange way she knew she must be acting, not the way certain thoughts made her retreat into herself and raise that fog as a defense- it was her own face, her own physical presence as opposed to the mental. It’s what she stared at every day when she woke up, staring into the mirror of her room as she got dressed for the day, when she did wake up in her room. It’s what her eye stared at now as it drifted up from the rose she kept on her vanity. Eye. Singular. Her jaw tensed as she shut her eye, head dropping with her overgrown mane falling over her face. The person in her reflection felt like a ghost. It wasn’t her.

But, then again, some part of her latched on to who she saw. It was her, a reflection of what she had gone through, just as the dye on her back helped define the new Pollen.

All of it felt like a lie. Conflicted, Pollen’s nails dragged across the fine wood of the vanity, a low hiss rising through her throat. She barely registered the feel of it on her paws. ‘Come on,’ her mind echoed, ‘keep it together for one day.’

“I don’t know if I can.” Her breath caught in her throat- it wasn’t the first time she talked to herself while she was alone, cycling words, but the act was one of privacy. No one needed to hear her one-sided responses other than herself.

She took a deep breath, glancing up and straightening her spine. “We’ll just be normal for one day. No sulking about how we look.” ‘Maybe put on something good,’ she continued in her thoughts, turning her body like it was a rigid machine to her dresser.

Her skin felt tingly. She was on the verge of dissociation, she knew it, but she forced her mind forward, her paws to roam over the drawers and filter through pieces of clothing. Finding the right outfit wasn’t hard. She had a blue, thin top in mind, and pairing it with a dull gray of a pair of shorts seemed natural. Once her clothes were changed, she hesitated at seeing her mirror again. Was that her? It felt like a substitute, as though she were some ghost in her own body, even her thoughts warping into something unrecognizable.

A breath of air huffed out of her as she shook her head. She hated thinking about this. It felt like she was at the edge of a cliff, and she was willingly walking herself off the edge, staring down into a deep, watery abyss.

And if she thought too hard about it, she could have sworn another part of her had already dipped far beneath the waves and come back changed by whatever eldritch being awaited her.

Did that make sense? ‘Sure,’ her mind echoed back, and for a brief second the reassurance worked. Just for a moment. It sunk in after that and a pit in her stomach formed. Her gut twisted along with her lips, her expression souring as she sighed roughly. Talking to herself still was a sign of something- she wasn’t sure what, but it certainly wasn’t a good one. It couldn’t be Chaos, could it? A lingering infection making her delusional? Someone pressing thoughts in her mind through magic?

No. This all felt like it was all her, even if it didn’t feel like Pollen. Maybe it was the dissociation, but she wasn’t Pollen. But, if she wasn’t, then who was she? Her eye hardened again as she turned from her room and let herself out of her door, muscles tense. She had changed so much from that incident. The fog of memories pressed ever further into her as she delved deeper into those mental blocks. Why could she remember more now as she felt different? Caves, she hated all these questions. As she paced down the hall, her hands balled into angry fists as she attempted to just will her brain into silence for once.

It never worked. The impression of want drifted from the back of her head, the need to do her duties in the garden trying to overwrite her desire to practice, just as she did day in and out. At least, when she remembered to. Fine, gardening, that was easy. She knew gardening. You just water the plant and wait for it to grow.

Her mind buzzed with negativity. Was that not enough? Her hand drifted to hold her head briefly, which trailed down into a fake itch at her jaw and neck. She didn’t care if there was more to it. She just wanted to make whatever part of her that needed it happy, like giving attention to a pet or something.

Maybe she needed someone to talk to, she- part of her- realized. She shouldn’t feel so split like this. Her body was meant to be her own, not like two parts of the same brain struggling to comprehend what was happening. The thought was enough to drive her to a stop before an intersection of hallways. It’s not like she wasn’t fully not herself when she wanted to train or think about those old thoughts or be like Aethril.

A frown etched across her face. Is that what this was? Was she just trying to emulate Aethril? Taking a deep breath, Pollen ran her thumbs over the side of her digits, letting the thought sink in. That’s... really what it felt like. Like she’d imposed some make-believe Aethril right in her mind, and she’d parked herself in place and made herself home. She’d occupied Pollen’s body, she’d made her push herself more than she’d like, made her wake up in the middle of doing something else and left her confused and stranded.

It would be a miracle if nobody noticed it, really. Fuck, had they noticed? The anxiety clawed at her throat, and the presence in her mind returned, almost soothing in nature. Normal Gembound weren’t like this. But, she wasn’t normal, was she? She died. The leak of a memory jolted her mind into high alert. The fog scrambled back together hodgepodge, but she remembered the pain, the trauma.

Her body shuddered along with her breath. ‘Center yourself. Myself. Calm,’ she tried to parse, her mind blending and forgetting who was even existing. She knew how to calm down with deep breaths, but it was hard when the overwhelming thought of her memories compounded with that same fear of unknown entities haunting her waking moments. Clasping her paws over her mouth, she fell back into the wall with a solid thunk and closed her eye. Focus. She had to focus. Focus on somewhere she liked, a place for herself, a place to be comfortable.

Nothing. Her headspace was an empty buzz, filled only with the texture of coarse bark and leaves choking her at her throat.

‘Stop.’

The air caught in her lungs.

‘Stop,’ her thoughts pleaded. Pollen’s antlers tapped on the wall as she tipped her head back, sucking in deep gasps of air.

‘Breathe.’ Her eye opened, and her muscles dropped as her world shifted. In the back of her mind, whoever she was again, whoever was there before had begun to block herself out from existence, hiding away in a brick fortress of her own design.

Pollen breathed in deeply as she shook out her arms. The physical repercussions of the other’s panic attack lingered in her heartbeat, but she could do her best to center herself, drawing on that headspace and simply existing in it for a moment.

But the real world had duties, and she had to tend a garden to make someone happy.

How could she even tend a garden when she had no memory of it? Her life had been split in two as she worked through the aftermath of His appearance alone, nothing but herself to keep her in isolated company. Yes, there were others there, but- they had been fine, right?

Pollen shook her head. Now’s not the time for introspection. Pollen from before that had shut herself off, so it was time for Pollen from after that to do what she had to. At the very least, she could refill some of the vases, right? Yeah, that sounded right.

Shoving every thought into a hole that she’d revisit later, Pollen meandered around the Palace until she found a pitcher, wandered more until she found water, and finally stepped quietly through the halls as she filled all the vases she spotted. In the back of her mind she was hyper-aware of just how stiffer she walked, her back straight and muscles more tensed with an outward sense of confidence. It was a farce and she knew it. Still, something about it made her feel right- Young Pollen (name pending, she imagined) paced lighter, walked faster with her hands more emotive, always looking at everything. Now, she had a goal. A purpose. It was her’s and her’s alone, and that purpose drove her now to do that work she assigned herself cycles ago.

Or, the her of cycles ago self-assigned it, at least. In any case, it was her job and title. Garden Knight- part of that was gardening, and she’d just have to embrace that.

She barely paid mind to the cleaning lessers within in the Palace. For a moment, she almost made to reach for one but stopped herself short- no, no, they had their jobs, too. Instead, she watched as one darted out to swipe away a splattered drop of water, only to scurry back to its crevice. They never worried about mental states and trauma and stuff, did they? Clenching her jaw, she turned away from the scene and carried on, the pitcher in both paws. Every plant in the Palace was to be accounted for. She lost herself in her work, putting aside distractions to simply just be.

At least it was an easier task to have no thoughts to. Just look for the next vase. Keep watering, keep walking, keep exploring. Don't think about how you don't recognize yourself in your day to day life anymore. Only plants, today. Only plants.

The Zoisite did not have privilege to roam. It did not have the right to a name. It was a machine in a cog, and despite several set backs, it had done enough that its sibling had insisted: You have EARNED these rights. How strange, then, that it did not seek out Master Vargas to ask for these things, and instead... Instead, it quietly wandered out past the farms of Pegasus and toward the ultraviolet-heavy glow of Cepheus.

It was easier to ask for forgiveness, than permission, after all.

But it had not felt quite normal in some time. There had been too much going on, too much out of its control, too much of a gaping, bleeding hole left in its inner most heart. And it had tried, much like Pollen did, to forget all of its worries with gardening. It was easy, mechanical: you watered the plants and they grew. You dug up the dirt, planted new plants, did proper trimming of dying leaves and inspected each for insects and lessers that would otherwise devour them.

This would work, perhaps, if it could get itself to feel like itself when it was gardening. It simply hadn't, however. There were times when it felt less like an it, and more like a someone, but those days came and went with less frequency than the dimming of the lights. Its farm had never quite recovered from the scars it had left on the land: much of the plants needed to be regrown, and its magic had been more harmful than helpful as of late. At best, it was left exhausted. At worst, it actively rotted the food it was trying to make. And so, even after weeks of work, the Forge's farmland still had visible signs of the altercation.

And it was getting worse, wasn't it. Yes, the Zoisite could soldier through, mechanically functioning as well as ever. Here and there, they would feel something, even coax a name that didn't seem to wholly belong to them to their mind. But less and less was that happening within its mind, and there it was: a quiet fear. One that threatened to break the whole system down into nothingness. Because if it could not be Zoey, and it struggled to hold up the weight of its role-- the Zoisite-- then, what would be left? A husk? When it felt like nothingness was all it was, time seemed to drift away from it. Its grasp on reality itself seemed to slip away. One moment it was bright, the next dim with the evening fade of the cave lights.

That frightened it. And it, they, the Zoisite, was supposed to be strong enough to handle all of this. It struggled for the better part of a cycle before it finally resigned itself to needing to do something. Unfortunately, Master Vargas was... fine, for comforting, for reassurances, for keeping the status quo, but this would do nothing for the growing disease inside of the Zoisite.

It needed to go somewhere where they could be whole again. There was only one place that made any sort of sense. The garden of Cepheus. It had made it all the way to the garden wall before it seemed to shake itself out of its empty thoughts, stirring itself from a daze, an almost sleep-walk. At least it had made it here in one piece, and without aggravating any of the local fauna or-- or the palace guards.

Still, the lack of focus. Worrying. The Zoisite clicked its mandibles together, and leaned its head back, peering at the garden wall. How long had it been since it had first snuck through here? The memories were hazy, like trying to remember a story that it didn't belong to. It hoped that feeling would fade. It had just been a long time, after all. It would get better once it found their friend.

Carefully, the insectoid creature climbed up the wall and skittered down into the garden proper, glancing around for signs of life. That was, creature-life, not... plant life, of which there was plenty to be found. A quick mental check found only a growing anxiety deep within its otherwise cold carapace, a shuttering going down its quills. What if... A tiny murmur of a thought, barely audible until it repeated, what if-- what if. It stuck in its brain, never quite finishing the words but the briefest of sensations accompanied them: worst case scenarios. What if Pollen didn't want to see her? What if they destroyed this garden, too? What if Aethril found out she was trespassing? And worse still: what if they were breaking the rules. No, scratch that, they were breaking the rules. They should not be here.

The Zoisite began to walk through the garden anyway. They had come too far to turn back now, and this thrum of fear was almost comforting. It was a sign that they were alive: a pulse within what otherwise had felt corpse-like for too long.

It did find her, eventually, taller than they remembered, somehow. It stopped, head tilted back and cocked slightly to stare forward rather than at its feet. If not for the fact that the muta was unmistakably unique in her verdant fur and bipedal nature, maybe the Zoisite would have worried that this wasn't their friend. But that was silly. This was Pollen, the gardener; look, she even had a pitcher of water she was using to tend to the plants.

Its voice was rough, the syllables grinding against clacking jaws: "Pollen...?"

Her mind started to drift again. Pollen couldn't help it, but at least it was better than the heavy weight her thoughts carried before. The proper term, if she'd ever read it in the library, would be dissociation- that feeling of autopilot, an adoption of this way to cope by simply throwing herself out of her body and letting it do the tasks it needed to do.

Of course, that meant that she didn't entirely notice the ~~intruder?~~ visitor until its voice cut through and snatched her back into her mind. Her body tensed in brief alarm- the last surprise visitor was, well- She stared forward, the pitcher in her hands half-turned and filling the vase enough to let its water drip over the edges. A blink, two of them, to clear her head. Why was she using a pitcher? The return to herself brought confusion and fog. Like a puppet coming to life, Pollen took an uneasy step back and shook her head, righting the vessel and holding it close to her chest.

Her ear closest to the zoisite flicked when she turned. Even changed to who she was now, Pollen's face lifted with ease and comfort at seeing a friend. An actual friend, not just someone she lived around, someone who she could just enjoy being with. This- Zoisite was almost an anchor in that moment, grounding Pollen and coalescing the muta back into reality. Part of her wanted to leap for joy, run to Zoey, hug them, be next to them, celebrate for some reason- it overwhelmed her briefly with a gentle tug of her body forward, that gentle look warping into one of sharp and open fondness.

The expression reigned itself in quick, and her shoulders tightened despite her smile. "Zoe... y?" Her voice felt stiff in her throat. Right, this was Zoey. THE Zoisite. Her friend. Nothing would change that immutable fact. No matter what face she wore, she still loved her friend. No matter if her voice dipped down, if she stood taller, if she wore different clothes or said different things. This was the friend she missed most with all of herself, the one she thought to visit and yet... never did.

Her paw tensed on the pitcher, nails drumming on its surface. "How..." She started before shutting her jaw with a click of her teeth. Her voice was different, older, lower in tone. She was doing it and knowing she was doing it, but she didn't stop, really. For a moment, she breathed in and breathed out, just once, drawn out to center herself. "How've you been?"

There was so much to catch up on. Already, Pollen mustered up the thought of what to say about her eye, about the new variety of foliage across her skin, about what she'd been up to in her day to day life. How much could she even say? Oh, she could ramble on and on, certainly, but she held her tongue just this once.

Zoey was the guest of honor in her mind, after all.