Dahlia and the Garden of Light - Chapter 61: Chapter 61

The Garden – Twilight
The last rays of sun soaked the garden in amber and violet. The light pooled around the two figures still seated side by side—Mira and Dahlia, the mother and daughter once separated by fear, now knitted together by silence, memory, and the trembling thread of trust.
Dahlia didn’t speak. She waited.
Mira’s voice came slowly, like peeling back an old letter.
“You asked what happened after I left you.”
Dahlia nodded.
Mira stared ahead, eyes distant. “I ran. At first, I didn’t know where to go. I just knew I had to disappear completely. I burned my name. My face. I joined Special Operations in a remote unit under a false identity. I thought if I kept running toward the fire, maybe Echelon would stop chasing my shadow.”
Dahlia blinked softly. “You became a soldier?”
Mira nodded. “I was good at it. Too good. I understood their tactics. I knew the dark corridors of control. I knew how to disappear inside a mission. And for a while, that’s all I was. A ghost in a gunmetal uniform.”
A pause.
“Then… someone found me.”
A Man with Warm Eyes
“I met him in a training unit in the eastern highlands. He was like quiet spring water. Gentle. Curious. His name was Luka.”
“Was he kind?” Dahlia asked.
Mira smiled faintly. “He made me laugh. That alone terrified me. He wasn’t part of Echelon. Just a field medic with stubborn hope. We talked under the stars. He said I looked like someone who’d forgotten how to be loved.”
Dahlia leaned closer, breath held.
“I told him everything. Not at first—but over time. He said he’d stay, no matter how broken the road. And he did. For fifteen years.”
“You loved him.”
“I did. And I gave him a son.”
The Birth of Derek
“Derek was born during a storm in the mountain compound. He was small. Soft. So quiet I feared something was wrong. But he gripped my finger like he’d known me forever.”
Mira’s voice grew gentler.
“He didn’t glow like you did. He didn’t show any sign of being like me. He just smiled a lot. Laughed at clouds. Held bugs like they were friends.”
She chuckled softly.
“But when he turned three, we were walking in the village and a stray dog lunged at him. I ran, tried to shield him. But he didn’t scream. He just looked at the dog and… spoke, but not with words. And the dog laid down at his feet like a tame cub.”
Dahlia’s eyes widened. “He has a gift too.”
“Yes,” Mira whispered. “The ability to calm, to bond. Animals understand him instinctively. Like how plants understand you.”
The Betrayal
“Luka was scared,” she said. “Not of Derek—of what it meant. What it might bring. I begged him to keep it quiet. But then he disappeared for three nights. I found him in the comms bunker.”
Dahlia said nothing, sensing the crack in her mother’s voice.
“He told Echelon. He thought they’d protect us if he handed over information. He thought they’d see Derek as a miracle, not a weapon.”
“But they didn’t,” Dahlia whispered.
“They never do,” Mira said, voice breaking.
She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket.
“I took Derek and vanished again. I left Luka behind. I don’t know what happened to him. I never looked back.”
Underground Again
“Life became colder after that. We moved city to city. Sometimes jungle, sometimes desert. I changed names again. Taught Derek how to hide, how to keep secrets. But then…”
Her voice cracked.
“He got sick. At seven. No fever, no virus—just wasting. Like something inside him was burning too fast. Animals would still follow him. Birds would land on his shoulder. But he’d get tired too easily. Dizzy. Weak.”
“Because of his power?”
“I didn’t know. I had no one to ask. But I remembered… you.”
Dahlia’s hand trembled slightly on the grass.
“I had heard stories. Hints. A girl who could heal. Who made vines grow in warzones. A girl with light in her hands. I knew it had to be you. So I began tracking the threads.”
“You came to find me.”
“When Derek was ten. I was out of time. He was slipping away. You were my last hope.”
“And then…” Dahlia murmured, the memory half-formed, her heart filling in the blanks.
“Yes,” Mira said. “We found the safehouse. And you healed him. Even though I hadn’t earned your forgiveness.”
From the Trees – Derek Watches
A few meters away, perched in the fork of a thick tree, Derek listened.
He hadn’t meant to. He was following a hawk that landed near the garden. Then he heard his name.
He pressed his cheek to the bark, breathing quietly.
He remembered that stray dog. The pull in his stomach. His mother’s face as they ran again. He remembered her going without food to keep him healthy. Teaching him to hold still, to sleep without making a sound, to move like air through forests.
He remembered the sickness. And her desperation.
He climbed down quietly. Walked toward the two of them.
“I tried,” she whispered. “I tried so hard to keep you safe.”
“I know,” he said. “I remember the lullabies in caves. The chalk drawings on underground walls. You never stopped being a mom. Even when you were terrified.”
Dahlia knelt beside them, wrapping her arms around both.
They stayed like that as the garden glowed softly around them—three hearts, woven by pain and love and the fierce, unspoken promise of never again.
Background – The Garden Moves
From the veranda, Amy, Eliot, and Theo watched quietly.
“She’s starting to remember,” Amy whispered, voice choked.
“No,” said Eliot, a soft smile on his lips. “She’s starting to feel. That’s stronger.”
Theo wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie. “It’s like… the family’s blooming again.”
William stepped out onto the path, holding two mugs of herbal tea. “Let them sit in it. Don’t interrupt the soil when the roots finally meet.”
In the distance, a few village children played near the water’s edge, unaware of the storm that had just passed in the garden’s heart.
And up in the sky, the hawk circled once—then flew away.