The Garden is too bright.

The colors shimmer with a sweetness that feels… deliberate. Every flower opens just a bit too slowly. Every breeze carries a perfume too perfectly nostalgic. The grass sings under your steps. The sky hums a lullaby I almost recognize.

But none of it is real.

I know illusion when I see it. I’ve spent lifetimes watching reality bend under the weight of longing. And this place — this Garden of Delights — is built from longing. It tastes like joy, but melts like sugar glass. Beautiful. Hollow.

The Garden didn’t reject me — but it didn’t embrace me either. I pass other Cookies laughing, dancing, lost in delights they no longer question. They don't see me. Or they won’t.

Hearing footsteps nearby I glance backwards and notice something, or someone. Someone who lost their way into the Garden of Delights.