Bard was looking for something in the flowers.
A few meeps floated over his shoulders, chiming to one another while they searched between petals, under leaves, inside blossoms that were too small to hold anything and too strange to be trusted.
Bard crouched, lifted a pale violet flower with two fingers, looked beneath it, then let it fall back into place.
A meep checked the next one.
Another meep shook its head.
Logan stood beside Ahri, still holding her hand, and stared.
"What is he doing?" Logan asked.
Thresh stood a few steps behind them, arms folded, expression flat.
"The Keeper of the Garden wanted to meet you."
Logan paused.
"He wanted to meet me?"
Keeper of the Garden...
That title tugged at something in Logan's memory about the lore of Spirit Blossom Bard, about the Keeper of the Garden. The name was familiar. He remembered pieces, but nothing really useful.
Logan opened his mouth. "Last time I met him, I couldn't understand a damn thing he was trying to say, so if you expect me to, "
He stopped.
Thresh was staring at him with a beautiful face that had become a mask of restrained fury, as if every word Logan added might convince him to use the chain again.
Logan closed his mouth.
Right.
He should be grateful Thresh brought him here at all.
He looked at Ahri. Her fingers were tight around his. Her eyes followed Bard with quiet attention, though there was something heavy in her posture now, something small and ashamed every time one of her tails shifted behind her.
Logan squeezed her hand once, then he walked toward Bard, Ahri came with him.
"Bard," Logan called.
No response.
Bard lifted another flower, looked beneath it, and set it down.
"Bard."
A meep looked at Logan, Bard did not.
Logan tried again, louder. "Keeper of the Garden?"
Still nothing.
Logan stopped a few steps away and exhaled through his nose.
Great.
Ahri tugged lightly on his hand.
Logan looked at her.
She was not looking at Bard now. Her attention had shifted to a nearby tree, a white-barked thing with thin branches and pink leaves that shimmered like glass. She stared at a point high among the branches.
Logan followed her gaze.
He saw nothing.
"What is it?"
Ahri released his hand and walked to the tree. She placed her palms against the bark, then climbed, her dress caught on a branch once, but she freed it with a small sound of frustration and continued upward, Logan moved closer.
A moment later, she reached between two pink leaves and cupped something in both hands.
When she climbed down, she held a tiny light.
It was pale pink, almost white at the edges, trembling like a firefly that had forgotten how to fly. Logan felt something from it before she came close enough to show him clearly.
Nostalgia.
Not his.
Something private. Distant. Salt on the air. A sound like water striking wood. A grief that had been folded small and left somewhere it could not decay.
Logan thought he smelled seawater.
Ahri carried the little light to Bard and held it out.
This time, Bard turned.
The meeps around him burst into bright, delighted sounds. Bluebell spun in a full circle. Two other spiritual meeps bounced against each other like bells in a storm.
Bard accepted the light with both hands.
Then he placed one large hand gently on Ahri's head.
Ahri froze for half a second.
Bard patted her once.
The meeps surrounded her, chiming happily, circling her shoulders and tails. Ahri's face remained sad, but the corners of her mouth lifted. She reached out to touch one of them, and it rubbed against her fingers before darting away.
Logan watched the exchange and felt more lost than before.
Bard sat down among the flowers.
Then he turned his palm upward and gestured for Logan and Ahri to sit beside him.
Logan glanced back at Thresh.
The expression on his face said, sit down, idiot.
Logan and Ahri sat there.
Bard reached into the folds of his robe and drew out an instrument.
At least Logan assumed it was an instrument.
It had the shape of a flute in one place, a trumpet in another, and something like a horn where no horn should be. The end opened into a flower. Its outer petals were pink. The inside shimmered silver. At the center sat a blue core, like pollen made of crystal.
Bard held the pale pink light over the instrument.
The light sank into the blue center.
Then Bard played.
The first note was soft.
...
The sound opened somewhere inside Logan.
A ship broke in dark water.
A man screamed a child's name into rain.
Small hands went still.
A body lay too quiet against soaked wood.
Then a room. A cup. Another cup. The man drinking until the edges of memory blurred. Drinking not because he liked the taste, but because forgetting had become the only prayer he still believed in.
Logan did not see the story with his eyes, he heard it.
He felt it pass through him in fragments of grief and salt and helpless love, a memory too heavy for the person who had carried it and too important to be thrown away.
When the melody ended, Logan realized he had stopped breathing.
Ahri's eyes were wet.
The meeps were quiet.
Bard removed the pale pink light from the instrument. He beckoned one of the meeps closer and placed it in its tiny hands. The meep tucked the light into its little jacket with solemn care.
Logan whispered, "Memories."
Ahri tensed beside him.
The reaction was immediate.
Anxiety. Deep and sharp, moving through the place where their bond touched. Logan turned to her, but she looked away before his eyes met hers.
Bard looked at Ahri.
Then he looked at Logan.
Logan almost laughed, but there was no humor in him. Everyone in this place seemed to understand entire conversations without words except him.
He was apparently the only one who still needed language like a normal person.
He sighed.
"Fine. Direct question." He looked at Bard. "Are you and the normal Bard, the original Bard, the golden one, the same entity? Do you share one consciousness?"
Bard stared at him.
Logan waited.
Bard kept staring.
Logan's patience thinned. Of course he would not answer. Why would the cosmic flower musician answer the actual question with actual words?
Then Bard lifted the instrument again.
Logan shut his mouth.
Bard played.
This time, the melody began with where they were.
The Spirit Realm. Petals. Soft wind. Souls moving beyond sight. Flowers opening under unseen footsteps. The scent of rain, old memories, and distant longing.
Then the notes shifted.
The sound became Ionia. Living land. Rivers. Blades of grass. Villages. Old temples. Spirit and flesh brushing against each other through roots, shrines, songs, and grief.
Then it widened.
Runeterra.
Logan felt oceans, deserts, ice, mountains, cities, beasts, war, laughter, blood, prayer, invention, hunger, and the simple weight of people living because they did not know how else to continue.
The melody shifted again.
Now it was something stranger.
Higher.
Farther.
Stars arranged in patterns too large for mortal eyes. Empty distances full of movement. Golden roads that were not roads. A realm beyond the sky where meaning had weight and music could cross between worlds.
Celestial Realm, Logan thought.
The melody stopped.
Logan sat very still.
A long silence followed.
He waited for something to happen.
...
Then, faintly, he heard another melody.
Distant.
It began where Bard's song had ended. Stars. Golden distance. Cosmic movement. Then it traveled backward. Runeterra. Ionia. The Spirit Realm.
Logan's eyes widened slightly.
Bard played again.
This time, the faraway melody answered.
The two songs met in the air above the flowers. They circled each other first, separate but aware. Then they began to move together, note by note, matching, answering, correcting, completing. Pink petals and golden stars.
The melodies became one.
The final note lingered long after Bard lowered the instrument.
Logan was about to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean.
Then he saw Bard's eyes.
They should have been pink, with blue outlines.
...
They shone gold.
A deep, intense gold that seemed to look through Logan rather than at him.
A presence filled the field.
Logan's body stiffened before he chose to move. The feeling was immense. It was like standing beneath a sky that had suddenly noticed him.
Ahri moved closer to his side.
Bard stood.
The gold in his eyes flickered. For a second, the pink and blue returned. Then gold again. Then both at once, shifting like two flames sharing one lantern.
Bard began to walk.
Logan looked toward Thresh.
The Akana watched from a distance, arms folded. His face held open disdain now, as if to say there was only one correct thing to do and Logan was wasting time by checking.
Follow him, idiot.
Logan stood.
He took Ahri's hand again.
They followed Bard through the flowers, the meeps drifting around them in a quiet orbit. The path did not exist until Bard stepped forward. Flowers bent aside. Petals rose, becoming lights, then fell back into place when Logan passed.
Bard's eyes kept changing.
Pink and blue.
Gold.
Pink and blue.
Gold.
...
They reached a pond.
No, not a pond.
A lake, maybe. A huge still body of water surrounded by flowers taller than Logan's waist. Its surface was glassy and pink under the Spirit Realm's light, with blue ripples moving across it though nothing touched the surface. Small silver fish swam beneath.
Bard stepped to the edge.
The meeps gathered behind him.
He raised one hand over the water.
A sound moved through the lake.
The surface folded inward.
Logan recognized the shape before it fully formed.
A portal.
Bard's portal.
But larger than any Logan had imagined. It opened inside the water, a round passage of pink light bordered by blue, spinning slowly beneath the surface. The center looked deep enough to swallow a sky.
Bard turned and pointed at Logan.
Then at the portal.
Logan looked at the water, Ahri squeezed his hand.
He looked at her, she nodded.
They stepped into the pond.
The water was not wet.
Or it was, and Logan's body had no time to understand it.
The portal pulled them under.
...
For one breath, pink light surrounded them. They moved fast, faster than falling, faster than thought. The walls of the tunnel blurred beside them. Logan tried to look through them, but there was nothing to see, only diffuse color stretching past at impossible speed.
The pink began to change.
Slowly at first.
Then all at once.
Gold spread through the tunnel like sunrise through glass. The blue edge brightened. The scent of flowers vanished, replaced by cold, clean emptiness.
...
The portal opened.
Logan and Ahri emerged into stars.
For a moment, Logan forgot every question he had meant to ask.
Space spread around them in every direction. Planets turned in the distance. Suns burned like watchful eyes. Asteroids drifted in slow rivers of stone. Nebulas curled through the dark in colors too vast to name.
And in front of them stood Bard.
Not the Keeper of the Garden.
Not the Spirit Blossom aspect in pink.
A colossal golden being, robed in cosmic light, surrounded by drifting meeps and silent stars.
Bard, the Wandering Caretaker, looked directly at them.