The Garden of Remembrance
Dook coaxes Flops into The Dreamlands to visit the Memory Garden. En route, Flops tries surfing the rolling hills, fails to “spot” the Unbeast cavern, and shrinks from the Palace Scribe. In the Library, a frog echoes the bank clerk yet denies it. At the garden, Flops crushes a bloom and forgets The Stoat’s maple-syrup tic. Back home, Dook pots a quiet, blank flower: “We’ll need this one.”
Interior: Dook & Flops’ Living Room — Afternoon
Flops (sprawled across the couch, doom-scrolling Salazon): So many carts... zero checkouts... my wallet’s doing interpretive dance.
Dook (appearing through a tasteful wibble in space, carrying a clay pot and a tiny trowel): Field trip!
Flops (sits bolt upright): To... the fridge?
Dook (shakes head, delighted): The Dreamlands. Memory Garden. Bring walking shoes and two kinds of curiosity.
Flops (already tying sneakers over socks): Do I need the good curiosity or the one that gets me yelled at?
Dook (tilts head): Both.
Exterior: The Dreamlands — Mouth of a rolling valley
A door of fern-veins irises open. Dook and Flops step out onto grass that shimmers like velvet static.
Flops (shading eyes): Why is the hill... rolling?
A nearby hill cheerfully tumbles past like a green boulder, trailing dandelion confetti.
Dook (waves at the hill): They commute.
Flops (already crouching to build momentum): Oh we are absolutely doing this.
He launches. The hill rolls. Flops rolls. For one majestic second, he’s Sonic-adjacent glory—then the hill jukes sideways. Flops pinwheels into a puff of milkweed.
Flops (standing, dizzy): Noted. The hills have handles, and I didn’t read the manual.
Dook (offers a fern-frond to dust him off): The manual is implied.
Exterior: The Dreamlands — Rolling Hills District
Flops (trying again, sprint-drop-tuck): Okay, I’ve studied their patterns.
He sprints along a ridgeline, times a roll, and actually syncs with a hill. For twenty meters he glides atop the green sphere, whooping.
Flops (grinning wide): Skill issue resolved!
The hill laughs in thunder-purr tones and flicks him gently onto springy moss.
Dook (approving): Diplomacy with terrain. Nice.
They pass a not-quite-there grotto. When Flops stares at it, it’s missing. When he glances away, it exists—dripping echos, a hush of appreciative static.
Flops (squinting hard): Is that the Unbeast cavern?
Dook (looking politely adjacent): It prefers un-attention.
Flops (trying not to look, looking anyway): I can totally not look—wait, no I can’t—ugh—why is wanting to see making it hide?
A polite sign winks into being only when Flops blinks: “Visitors Welcome (But Not If You’re Trying).”
Flops (groans): That’s targeted bullying.
Dook (bow): We’ll wave from the corner of our eyes. (he half-turns, wiggle-waves to the not-cave) Thank you for your service.
A soft static-purr answers. They continue toward a living palace that seems grown, not built—terraces braided with impossible ferns.
Interior: Palace of Ferns — Entrance Hall
A robed SCRIBE—an assembly of floating book, quill, and law of averages—glides forward. Ink curls in the air like smoke-glyphs.
Scribe (pages whispering): Purpose of visit?
Flops (flinches behind Dook): Oh no. Bureaucracy with levitation.
Dook (friendly): Memory Garden, please. One tour, two beings, one of whom rolls at inopportune moments.
Scribe (quill pausing, then writing a footnote mid-air): Proceed through the Memorabilia Wing, past the Door That Opens When You Stop Trying, then left into the Library of Things That Didn’t Happen. A docent will deny and/or explain.
Flops (stage-whisper): It’s the “and/or” for me.
Interior: Memorabilia Wing
They stroll a gallery of floating artifacts from their lives: the tiny gnome bottles; Odie’s ominous cactus in a glass cylinder; the beechball with a suspicious dent; a scratch-card with three cherries frozen mid-reveal; a glossy gift wrap with skiing moose; a T-shirt that reads "I PRINT MY OWN CARBON CREDITS".
Flops (stopping at the moose wrap): That was a good day.
Dook (palms on the glass, fond): Most of our days try to be.
Flops (points at the cactus): That thing is plotting. I can smell it.
Dook (gentle): It’s only a plant.
They pass a display: “SALAZON—SHIPPED YESTERDAY FOR ORDERS YOU PLACE TOMORROW.” Flops involuntarily shudders.
Interior: Library of Things That Didn’t Happen
The hall lengthens in directions geometry declines to comment on. A DESK that’s part-here, part-adjacent hosts a LIBRARIAN: an amphibian presence with the exact “I will ruin your afternoon with compliance” posture of the Sala City bank clerk.
Librarian (not looking up): States purpose.
Flops (leans over the desk, eyes narrowing): It’s you.
Librarian (blinks with historic patience): Incorrect. I am me. A Librarian. Repositories; not repositories of money.
Flops (jabs a finger): Same frog. Same long blink. Same “mmm... yes, but no” soul.
Librarian (flat): “Mmm... yes, but no” is a common amphibian idiom where I’m from.
Dook (waving amiably): We need directions to the Memory Garden.
Librarian (finally meets Dook’s eyes): The garden is for careful feet and careless hearts. Follow the lamplight that remembers you.
Flops (still glaring): She denied my whole future over a typo.
Librarian (registers a stamp on blank paper): Then consider this an archival opportunity to correctly file your feelings.
Flops (mutters): I’m going to correctly file a scream.
Exterior: Path of Remembering Lamps — Twilight hush (TV-E/I Segment)
Dook kneels by a lamp whose glow has the warmth of old cocoa.
Dook (teacher-soft): Memories are context with feelings. The Garden cultivates them as living indices. Stepping on one isn’t just rude—it's an edit to your own referencing system.
Flops (folds arms): So they’re... biological bookmarks?
Dook (nods): Kindness matters. Your mind is a library; each shelf label is emotional. The Garden just makes that literal. Walk slow; look where you set yourself down.
Flops (sighs): Fine. Heels light, heart heavy, brain medium-rare.
Dook (pleased): Perfect doneness.
Exterior: The Dreamlands Memory Garden
They enter a grove where memories grow as nodding flowers, each petal a vignette. Some blossoms hum with laughter; others rustle with worry. Overhead, dream-moths carry scraps of Tuesday.
Flops stops, transfixed by a bloom showing him and Dook failing to brew “autumn-leaf tea,” then giggling anyway.
Flops (soft): It was terrible and perfect.
Dook (watchful): Keep to the stones. The petals bruise easily.
Flops tiptoes along stepping stones. He leans toward a cluster showing The Stoat: a cashier smile that’s part performance, part shield; a maple-syrup bottle tucked under the counter; the faintest eye-twitch when someone says “sweet.”
Flops (quiet grin): There he is. My favorite Canadian bud.
He shifts his weight and—crrck—steps off stone. A small, pale flower collapses beneath his heel. A whisper like a page torn from a diary flits away.
Flops (wincing): Oww—uh... weird. I just... forgot why The Stoat is so twitchy about maple syrup.
He blinks, trying to chase the shape of a memory, finds only its outline.
Dook (checks the crushed bloom, voice gentle): Maybe it doesn’t matter? But it's probably a good idea to not step on more memories.
Flops (haunted): But it did matter a little. It was... a code? A euphemism? ...It was something.
Dook (offers a steadying hand): We can reseed meaning. Not the same, but honest.
They continue, careful. Dook kneels beside a strange flower whose petals are blank, like unexposed film. Its stem carries a thread of tomorrow.
Dook (quiet, almost reverent): This one is new.
He cups it. The bloom leans toward him, imprinting a faint image—Flops on the couch, a clay pot, rain on the window.
Flops (peering): That’s—hey, that’s our living room.
Dook (smiles): Good. It knows where it wants to grow.
Interior: Library of Things That Didn’t Happen
They retrace their steps. Flops keeps trying to look casually at the Unbeast cavern and fails; the cavern remains politely unavailable. The Scribe watches them pass, quill annotating “Successful Not-Trying: Mixed.”
Flops plants himself at the desk.
Flops (insistent): You are the same frog from the bank!
Librarian (stamps something that doesn’t exist): Identity is a shelving system. Your conclusion is misfiled. Or not.
Flops (throws up his paws): That’s not a denial!
Librarian (even): Correct! ..Or is it?
Dook (inclines head): Thank you for the lamplight.
Librarian (returns the nod, eyes lidding in amphibian near-blink): Do not confuse recollection with obligation. Go home before your curiosity tramples something tender.
Flops (half to himself): Tender is trample-able. Got it.
Exterior: Rolling Hills — Exit ridge
The hills roll by in slower breaths. Flops, chastened but unbroken, gives one last respectful micro-roll—feet stay on stone, body makes the motion. A hill purr-chuckles.
Dook opens a portal with a fern-spiral. The Dreamlands give them a breeze that smells like notebooks and first snow.
Dook (to the breeze): Thank you.
Interior: Living Room — Early evening
Flops (face-plants onto the couch): I’m exhausted. Why do I even go along with you?
Dook (sets a small clay pot on the windowsill, fills it with soil): Because being you near being me makes the world weirder in a way that helps.
Flops (muffled into the cushion): I hate how that makes sense.
Dook places the blank-petaled flower from the Garden into the soil. It settles like a yawn finding sleep.
Dook (soft, purposeful): This one is special. We need it later.
The window shows the kind of weather that remembers every childhood afternoon: a steady, forgiving rain.
On the coffee table, a framed photo from the Memorabilia Wing flickers into the smallest grin—Flops and Dook, leaf-tea grimacing, then laughing anyway.
Interior: Library of Things That Didn’t Happen
The Librarian stamps a ledger line that reads: “Patron insisted identity equivalence; resolution: mmm... yes, but no.” A corner of the page smells faintly of maple.
The Scribe’s quill, somewhere else, annotates: “Unbeast Cavern successfully remained unseen.”
Somewhere far from order, a hill laughs itself to sleep.