The Gardener of Nahi

Epilogue

Epilogue

Note on Translation

The remainder of this account was written in one of the indigenous languages of Nahi.  A composite of algorithms Lang3465bh and Lang5894je were used in the translation.  Any incongruous words or phrases have been ignored by the routine.  Details of the translation process can be found alongside the original unmodified text in the Hunion Archives on Nahi (reference number 478F1A55-EE8C-405C-B94C-C60344180E3B). 

 

Nahi

I have no more need of this journal. 

     My thoughts are whole and my mission is clear.  The puzzle is laid out before me, complete and solved.  Yet still I write down these words – not because I am a creature of habit, but because there is a far greater and different purpose at hand.

This final entry is for you, Myria.

You should find my journal opened up to this page near your inner-garments which you folded neatly next to our crude sleeping arrangements, and you should also notice that I am writing these words in Nahese such that you can read them.

It was a wise decision to stay in the stable.  Yes, the estate house would have been warmer and the mattresses softer, but I would not have wanted the last night we spent together to be marred by the tragedy that house has endured.  Besides, we weren’t sleeping much anyway, and the hay is the color of your eyes.

You have much work to do on Nahi, and I am sure you will succeed since you are a headstrong woman (I mean this in a good way).  You know enough of the morbid details to spread the news of how the hilma plant nearly destroyed your people - it should never be used in the same way again.  Tell Chaliani to destroy the ample supply in the palace gardens.  They are all poison – the work of Finn’s hands.  As for any plantation you stumble upon, burn it to the ground.

My recommendation is to also send Seirsy and Lin back to the Still with the aid of some additional guardsmen.  Even though the people there tend to use hilma for its direct effects, the old traditions could still be in place.  Those three will be your ambassadors to the western shore.

As for Chaliani, please tell him that his friendship meant much to me.  It was his faith in me that first let me trust myself.  He was the first one (even before you) to recognize me as the person I have become.

     I keep wondering about the dreams of the gardener.  Not the one that I personally experienced when I landed on the Palm of the Father, but the ones written down in the book of the intercessors.  It always confounded me why I never dreamt either of those stories as I came through the cloud, yet Chaliani always said that the man in them was me, or at least a possible me.

     Now, after all this time, I believe I may have figured it out.

The first story of the gardener – the story of the man who chooses his future over his past - it is simply an interpreted version of a prior me and you.  The core of it was just as real to them as our lives are real to us, but since they are both dead the truth has died with them.  The intercessors who wrote the story down and who dreamt it are dead as well.  Therefore we will never know how much of it is authentic and how much of it refashioned.  No one will ever know.  The lifeless version of me which I encountered on the beach and the frozen version of you who is buried on the palm of the father under thick snow - those are the only two who knew the truth.  These pages of ancient text might only be a fable among the living, but it was most certainly a tragic reality for them.

     So what really happened to them?  Or I should say, what happened to us?

     The only reasonable conclusion I can think of is that Finn somehow convinced me to leave with you.  It was probably here on this very same estate with its secluded beach when he realized I would never agree to work with him.  And so he tricked me, knowing that I was confused and did not know the consequences of going back through the CTC.  He must have cut you on the wrist and put you in his innership, forcing me to make a decision:  to either stay here and let you slowly bleed to death, or to pilot the innership back through the cloud to Cassidian, where modern and ample help awaited.  From his standpoint he wanted both of us dead and gone with no evidence remaining.  It was an elegant solution and I recognize the mark of his deceit in it.