(The Empress)
The misty woods paints reality in shades of green and grey. Your hair and clothes hold a slight sheen of moisture as you make your way through what might be a path, left by some animal your size but wiser in direction. Irregular shapes of the tree trunks and branches drop away around the jarring sight of a work bench. A figure steps in from your peripheral vision, and you stare in shock.
Upright
A human skull wears a deep green swathe of fabric, and might have been called a skeleton except for two arms obviously made from wood rather than bone. Ivy pokes out through where the neck might have been, and you can’t see much else. Though a shock, the figure is strangely beautiful, though inexplicable. They look at you with hollow eye sockets, taking a pause. Any longer might have signified alarm, but they turn to another table you didn’t notice – this time supporting a series of small pots with tiny plants. Whoever, or whatever this is, there’s work to do. They look over their shoulder and lift one pot, as if to show it to you specifically.
Reversed
There are several more pots than plants, though most that seem empty at first have dried-up black and grey stems. The strange, quiet garden was once much fuller. By season cycle, or something else? It’s hard to tell. And harder to tell by any kind of expression on the unchanging face of that skull. You look back to the pot that’s being offered to you – more overtly this time as the strange homunculus steps closer with feet you can’t make out. For you? You do take it, examining the strange plant in the center. The gardener then lifts their other hand – in it, a battered metal watering can. Whatever the reason for the empty pots, apparently you have a job, now, rather than simply observing.
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