A garden flanking Orapan’s home had frayed into gold, the crisp, late-autumn air whispering of the coming frost. Orapan and Tara sat tethered to a low stone bench, shadowed by the skeletal remains of a hydrangea bed.

Without preamble (as if merely surfacing from a shared, silent stream of thought) Tara pulled a poem from her phone and let these words drift into the cooling air:

Orapan lingered in the silence, her gaze drifting between the fading hydrangeas and a horizon of lost possibilities.

"Many seeds, indeed," she said softly — not to Tara, not to anyone, but rather as a way to say something when a thought has arrived and needs a bit of air. Her voice rose in a subtle, wondering lilt, as if she aware of alternative identities within her that come to seed.

Tara pocketed her phone. "Well, my dear, never take poetry too seriously," she said with a light tone of someone who has chosen equanimity over passion. "Poetry is merely a matter of linguistic gymnastics, a way of playing with words. More often than not, words do backflips for the sake of applause or playful fun."

Orapan turned to look at her — not offended, genuinely curious. "Well," she asked, with a bracing directness of one who found social evasion a chore, "what do you take seriously?"

Tara was quiet for a moment. A petal — hydrangea, pale violet, papery as a thought — detached itself from the nearest bloom and drifted, without urgency, to the stone path below.

"Only the knowledge," Tara said finally, watching it land, "that all things pass." She paused. "Nothing else."

The garden enfolded them in its slow, amber light. Behind the fence, a lawnmower stuttered into life, then died. A bee continued its ancient, rhythmic pilgrimage from bloom to bloom. And deep beneath the soil , the seeds continued their patient, invisible labor.