'Huh.' Jun looked around. Ethereal flames of colors and shades he’d never seen consumed the entire Garden.

'You'd think people would freak out more if everything around them was on fire, including themselves, but everyone seems to be doing fine. Oh. Okay, everyone is frozen with looks of absolute terror on their faces, but they're frozen in space. Sure, this happens all the time. I'm not freaking out.'

Feeling an irresistible draw from behind him and no immediate danger(?), Jun escaped reality and drew his attentions back to his creation. Because of his abnormal state, Jun hadn't sculpted based on any image, but on the wave of memories and feelings from his youth. He wasn't sure what he made.

Jun bit his lip hard. He drew blood. He gripped his hands around his tools so tightly that they groaned under pressure as his eyes became instantly blood shot. How could he have created this? This painful moment.

No. It was right. This was her love. He had no right to run from it. This was the moment he knew that love transcended even death.

Before him was a towering demon on her knees in her last moments. Her form kept her graceful elegance from when she had been human, while her beauty was elevated in her demonic transformation, even at the moment of demise.

Four sharp horns rose from her temples and curved into a crown to highlight her demonic beauty. Even on her knees, she was over eight feet tall with elongated limbs that ended in deadly claws and talons that offered no menace as they clutched her mortal wound. Tattered wings that once stretched so wide it seemed they'd blot out the world lay limb and broken at her sides.

Other than that, she looked just the same as before.

The same beautiful wild hair.

The same gentle face.

And the same tender smile that held so much pride for him.

Through two lives and two deaths, she loved him.

Even though he killed her.

The tears that didn’t fall when life derailed in betrayals fell freely now. He stroked the face that he thought he'd forgotten as all the sorrows, new and old, finally found its outlet.

He didn't notice his tears burn into streams of energy or how the fires were congregating on his body, turning white and flowed into the sculpture and then dispersed into the rest of the Garden and back into Jun in an ever visually dynamic cycle.

Jun didn't notice.

He had not allowed himself to be truly vulnerable since she was lost to him, but now, with his rejuvenated memory of her, he didn't try to hide it. He just missed her.

As his grief had run its course, he was grateful for one thing.

To have been able to bring up an image of his mother, he thought he'd never have, regardless of the pains, was worth a few tribulations.

Eyes still closed, hands still resting on the cheeks of the mother in his dreams, he found a slight moment of peace. He could now remember her face from before, when she would hold and comfort him, when the terrors of the demon lands threatened to break his little mind. She would smile and hold him close and sing ever so softly into his ear to chase all his fears away. Then she would thank him for blessing her life.

She chose to live and die a life of suffering so that he could live. She didn't even hesitate.

He opened his eyes and momentarily doubted his senses when, instead of his wounded, transformed mother, she stood there like how he remembered her. When they were happy, healthy and whole.

His mother looked at him with a mischievous smirk at the edge of her lips, like she knew a secret joke that never failed to tickle Jun’s curiosity.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

For a brief instance, he was back in the dark hollows of the wilderness, surrounded by the perils that colored his youth. She stood before him with her typical playfulness, wearing the one dress that she had kept safe, only to be worn on special occasions like Jun's birthdays, Christmas, Happy Jun day, and a dozen other reasons his mother had found to bring some cheer to their dreary world.

The dazzling dress made of the most precious materials and gemstones was once the source of endless envy of the upper class. Now faded and threadbare, a mere ghost of its days of glory, Jun thought it was the most beautiful dress in the world as it was, because it had seen all their best days together.

He never told her she never had to do those things to make him feel special. There wasn't a time that he wasn't happy when they were simply together. Regardless if it was in a poisonous swamp, a monster infested cavern, or a rare moment of safety and rest, it was all good times because she was there.

And now she stood before him.

He was sure that it had been a completely different scene before, but he didn't care. This was good.

A true peace.

A true smile.

Then the world lost its focus, and the world became dark.

---

Jun no longer felt a sense of self. Only his soul bore witness as the greatest secret of the universe shared its presence through the darkness.

An impossible canopy that challenged the infinite sheltered fruits as large as worlds and shined bright and numerous like an endless starry sky.

Far in the distance, a vast trunk that shattered his understanding of the universe proudly supported the vibrant heavens.

Roots like the towering titanic mountain ranges stretched out in every direction as endless rivers of energy, wider than any ocean, flowed and swirled through the roots like small streams into the trunk, to the infinitely twisting and reaching branches and leaves that offered it back to the world, new and clean in an endless glorious cycle with the purest energies flowing into the Fruits of the Worlds nurturing the Laws that defined existence itself.

Jun's soul, in its rawest state, made no effort to understand the impossible and only observed in awe at the majesty before it.

This wasn't something that mortals should see. Their minds and spirits would collapse at the barest glimpse.

Jun didn't know that.

He didn't see the light of his soul brightening and growing and strengthening. He didn't notice his senses gradually improving as sensations he couldn't understand washed and purified his soul.

Jun was too lost, barely holding on to his sanity from his position under the World Tree.

Knowledge and insights into laws and concepts he'd never even conceived were overwhelming his consciousness as the world became clearer to all his senses, new and old.

A single fruit above him resonated with Jun.

He looked up.

It looked like a glass apple that shined with infinite galaxies in infinite colors.

Somewhere in that swirl of colors was the Earth. That was his Fruit. A little dimmer than the others but his none the less. He just knew.

It was perfect.

Except....

That's when Jun became aware of an ugliness hidden between the shadows of the titanic leaves. Nausea inducing black tendrils weaved through vast blotches of the canopy, like countless vile snakes, connected to and defiling countless fruits.

Including his own.

He watched a new tendril emerge from the darkness between the worlds and slowly slither towards a clean and healthy fruit.

The connection was made and darkness spread.

There was nothing anyone could do about it.

This was their enemy.

The monsters beyond the gates.

The demons that haunted his youth.

...his mother.

Jun felt a raw, undiluted hate boil through him. How dare this filth defile their worlds! A powerful desire to cleanse all the darkness and all evil so that this wonder of creation could grow free and beautiful again, burst from his core.

A pulse of foreign emotion harmonized with his own.

A voice that spoke no words was calling out.

It was faint. He couldn’t understand, only feel.

It was pleading.

It was in such pain.

Help me.

The fear was felt through his soul and had marked it.

Jun awoke with a start, his hand still on his mother's human face. It helped calm his thundering heart, wondering if he’d been drugged.

Was that real?

It felt... more than real.

The wonder and awe.

The fear and disgust.

The World Tree had pleaded with him.

That was a head trip.

A flood of noisy agitation demanded Jun's attention.

He couldn't keep ignoring reality forever. Some sense was returning as Jun realized he'd done a lot of stupid things while blinded with emotions.

Shit.

The drone cam hovering by his face made him realize how fucked he was.

He turned his head away to see... his family.

Uncle Juan was holding an emotional Aunt Mary next to lil Davie that was supporting a tear stained Lily. Nicole and Tiana, looking dazed, stood close by. Even in their clear grief and confusion, he could see their concern for him.

That's right, he hadn't lost the most important things. His family and good friends that loved and supported him when he had nothing to where he was now.

They were his home.

As long as he had his home, everything would work out.

“Jun you're being evicted! We have to go over there now!”

“...what?”