Deer leads me straight into a forest. It looks like the painting we had entered. It has the same dark and lonesome feeling, but it hadn’t depicted the trail in front of us. It’s lit up by wooden posts with lanterns hanging from them. Instead of a flame a light-blue orb floats behind the glass.

I shouldn’t be surprised of these places anymore, but it’s hard to not be impressed when an entire forest exists inside of a gigantic fortress.

“If you follow the trail, you’ll eventually reach a garden. Don’t go too far,” Deer says.

When I turn around to thank it, it has already returned to the corridor and all I see is the gate closing and blending into the wall, until it’s completely gone. I sweep my eyes over the path and the dark trees that stands closely together. I would easily get lost if I decided to veer off the trail. Following Deer’s advice for now seems like the best decision. I slowly follow the path with the wooden posts.

The first garden I find is filled with light green bushes and trees. It feels like I’ve entered an entirely different forest, one that is filled with sunlight. A stream runs through the garden, and it fills the area with a gentle sound of trickling water. I can also hear birds chirping, yet I cannot find any when I’m looking around. The path ends in front of a wooden bridge, on its other side, a path of dark-grey stone slabs begins.

I cross the bridge, and continue towards the garden where large rose bushes lie like a crescent moon around the white stone benches. The short trees move in the wind, and sunrays finds its way through the trees’ leaves.

Cerberus is standing in the garden. As always, he’s dressed in spotless white clothes. This time the tall collar is embroidered in golden patterns that move down the torso. The black dreadlocks are tucked back, instead of loose like I’ve previously seen him wear it.

“Orchid?” he asks, like he isn’t certain I’m actually standing there.

I cannot blame him. First had made it clear I shouldn’t be in the Citadel to begin with. Yet, I hadn’t expected to see him here either. I’m not sure how to act, the last time we had spoken all of my thoughts and feelings had been written on my face. He had opened up; said things he likely should never have mentioned. Yet it felt like he knew exactly what to say to make sure I only knew what he wanted to tell me.

“Ah, Cerberus.”

“Are you alone?” he asks and fixates his eyes behind me.

“Deer showed me the way to the gardens.”

“But she let you go here by yourself?” He asks and narrows the one blue eye. The scarred face still looks friendly – if a bit doubtful.

“Yes?” I look around. “Is there a problem?”

“It’s easy to get lost here if you step outside of the path. Deer should have showed you the entire way. It’s unusual for new soul wanderers to visit the Citadel. What are you doing here?”

I stand next to the rosebushes. He follows me with his gaze.

“I’m here with Sun,” I say and study the roses, they’re bigger than my hand. “She was supposed to show me the library and the Hall of Memories. But something came up before we had time, so I’m supposed to wait here until they’re done.”

“Ah, the meeting,” he mumbles. It sounds like he’s talking to himself more than me.

I doubt that it’s meant for him to attend the meeting, since he neither excuses himself nor outright leaves the garden.

I gently touch the roses – a coldness moves over my fingertips – the same feeling as when you hold a hand towards an open freezer without touching anything, if slightly stronger.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Why is it that I can sometimes feel things? Like at the well – when I touched the liquid it was like I could feel the sorrow itself. And the food that you can feel. What determines that?”

Cerberus stands beside me; with one hand he gently touches one of the roses.

“You said you could feel things at the well,” I mention when he doesn’t answer.

He loosely holds one of the rose’s petals between two of his fingers.

“All guardians can feel, it’s different from your touch since we’ve never had a human vessel.” He plucks the petal away from the rose and keeps holding it between his two fingers. “We cannot feel heat nor cold. We cannot feel materials. Not soft nor hard. Not skin, neither my own nor someone else’s.”

“How do you feel then?”

“When someone or something touches our skin we’ll feel it, as will the ones touching us. This feeling, the soul wanderers have described it as electricity, a tickling feeling. I have nothing to compare it to, it’s hard to explain with my own words.”

He lets go of the petal; it slowly floats down towards the ground.

“Could you,” he pauses and hesitates, “could you explain what it’s like to touch as a human?”

The question is asked carefully and gently, I also notice an eagerness behind the blue eye – a thirst for knowledge. Cerberus is a mystery. At the well I had thought he had an aversion for humans and the living world, but this curiosity he has contradicts everything I thought of him. It makes me wonder if I misinterpreted him. And how could anyone explain something that is as normal as touch? I barely thought of how it felt like until I lost it.

“It has been a while since I could feel.”

“How did it feel like when you had your vessel?”

I try to remember how petals used to feel against my skin. But all I can feel now is an empty sorrow. Do the guardians have the same longing and desire to feel like the soul wanderer has? If Cerberus didn’t have the eager and curious look in his eye, I’d believe you couldn’t long for something you’d never experienced. Maybe we’re more similar than I’d like to admit.

“I barely remember. I’m always longing after it and when I’m not feeling it, it’s like I’ve never experienced it.”

Cerberus glances down at the roses. “And now? Could you describe the rose?”

I nod and slowly move my fingers around the rose. I cannot feel the flower against my fingers, but the cold sensation moves over my skin like invisible steam.

“I cannot feel the rose,” I admit, and lay the hand underneath so the top of my fingers touches the stem. “I feel that something cold is moving up my fingers.”

I pull away my hand and Cerberus seems even more confused and frustrated.

“I see… as for your earlier question, on what determines what you can feel. I have no good answer for it. I’m not fully aware of why. But there are places, worlds that are ancient, they existed long before us.”

It’s a terrifying thought that there were worlds that existed before them, it makes me wonder what created them – or what created the guardians, or if they just started existing one day.

“Many of the ancient worlds have traits that the others don’t. There are creators, beings that spend much of their time in these kinds of worlds to create goods they sell to the market vendors. Sometimes these traits spill out of those worlds and into others. Like these roses.”

I look at the red rose I’ve just touched. “These… traits, they can reach the Citadel?”

“It’s unusual after all the doors to Arkaros – except the main entrance – were closed. But it’s not impossible.”

Sun had said the same thing, that every way – except the one we came from – to Arkaros is closed. How are these traits able to make their way to the Citadel if all the doors are closed? The main entrance is quite far from the Citadel, could it get all the way here without affecting anything else? And not to speak of what they had told me when I met them the first time.

“Cerberus,” I begin carefully, ”when me and Clover were called to speak with you, about one of the fractured, you mentioned that something was stolen.”

“We did.”

I cannot read the expression on his face, but it looks harsher than I’d prefer.

“You thought the fractured ones was involved… If all doors are closed, how did they get through?”

A sudden fear hits me out of nowhere, but it doesn’t last long – only a few seconds – but it makes me shake uncontrollably. It crept underneath my skin long enough for me to feel terrified, and I know that it’s Cerberus that’s causing it.

I take a step back. First, I thought it was a punishment for asking a question I never should have asked. But I realize that’s not what it is at all. It’s a warning – one that tells me that I’m on all too thin ice.

Cerberus straightens his back and gives me an apologetic expression with tense lips. It gave him no joy to have to warn me in this way, I know that, but a part of the feeling still lingers on my skin.

“The meeting is not over in a long while. They have a lot to speak of. Would you like me to show you the rest of the garden?”

He forces a smile, like he hadn’t made me feel like I was made of fragile glass.

A part of me want to decline and find a place where I can build myself up again.

“Alright,” I say with a broken voice.