This story was originally posted to AO3 on Christmas Eve 2022, as a present to Camille (saintlygames on AO3) as part of the Natasha Pulley Book Club Discord's Secret Santa

Winter/Spring

Somewhere in the sky, the gardener starts preparing.

They wander amongst the black and white dwarves, shivering as they pick up the remains of the stars that these once were, gathering them into a sack and finding new parts of the sky to sow them in. The gardener rakes through the deep, dark expanses of gas and gravity, scattering these remains.

When this is done, the gardener watches as different seeds attract different remains, and other nutrients flung across the sky. Sometimes, they give the seeds a little nudge towards spaces where they might best begin to grow. There are some stars still dying, even as they do this, and these are cleared away, the dead bits pruned and given over to the new seeds.

Some thought is put into the placement of the new stars, and where they are in relation to the stars still blooming, the ones slowly dying. The gardener will never see how the garden looks, not truly, and they cannot know if it looks truly beautiful, even though it seems that way to them. Nonetheless, they feel excitement, for it is beginning to warm up. These new stars will begin sprouting soon, and the gardener looks forward to it.

And so, they keep going.

…

Spring/Summer

Somewhere in the sky, the gardener has much to do. The stars are staring to gather enough to undergo fusion, becoming warmer and generating heat that helps along the smaller stars. The gardener has a better sense of what these stars will become further down the line, the sizes and shapes into which they may bloom.

In the meantime, they keep nurturing the stars, helping them to grow. They re-position some of the earlier bloomers, making sure that they are not too close to the giant rocks, the ones called planets. Apparently, there are beings like the gardener that dwell on these planets. Beings that think and wake and sleep and work. The gardener wonders if they can see the stars too, and what they look like from what feels like so far away. The gardener wonders what they would say, if they could reach out and ask those beings. Speech is something the gardener knows how to do but has no use for. Not when their days are spent with their hands in the deep, rich minerals of the sky or curled around a spade, coaxing these new stars into being.

Still, it is in these early spring days that the gardener attempts it sometimes. While digging with the spade or spreading out seeds, the gardener tries to make sounds. But they are swallowed up, with nobody to hear them. So, the gardener becomes silent again, and carries on working. The stars continue growing and blooming around them. The garden keeps growing and warming, just as it should.

And so, they keep going.

…

Summer/Autumn

Somewhere in the sky, the gardener toils. They make time to enjoy their work, too, because here and now, seeing their latest stars stable and radiant, just fills them up with pride. They sometimes wonder what it would be like to see all this from a different vantage point, somewhere to peer down or gaze up at their stars from. The gardener cannot do such a thing, they can only gaze at them from amongst them, stroking their warm, tender petals and marvelling at the colours.

What do those beings that dwell on planets see, the gardener wonders. What do they see? Do they see?

Still, there is no time to ponder on those questions, not for long. The gardener is always busy, even in the times when the stars are at their brightest and best. They must be careful to keep them stable, make sure they do not turn red or worse, wither too soon. Some stars are growing bigger, too big, and while it's alright to leave some to become supernovas the rest need to be trimmed down. These trimmings, the gardener hopes, will become new stars.

And it seems like they will, as summer goes on and cools into autumn, as the stars begin to redden their leaves now, at the right time. Their radiance doesn't disappear, not exactly, but they are withering still. The brilliance of before is gone, but there is much to do still.

And so, they keep going.

…

Autumn/Winter

Somewhere in the sky, the gardener waits for the end. The stars are breaking down now, shedding their red leaves, leaving dwarves behind. These, too, will fall apart with time. The gardener sweeps them all up, uses them to warm up the other stars that are still hanging on while saving others for later, to use to help the new ones grow.

There are other things to do too. But it is cold now, so very cold. The gardener, not for the first time, wonders what it would be like to have another gardener with them. Not just to share the load with, but to share all of this with. Someone to reach out to, because another gardener would be a great deal easier to reach than whatever manner of beings dwell on the planets. But there is only the gardener, and so the gardener carries on.

Some stars start to die, becoming dwarves, and so these first seeds can be scattered across the sky, fed occasionally but mostly kept rooted in place, safe and as warm as they can be so that the frost doesn't set in, turn them into nothing before they even have a chance to germinate. They take care to make sure there is enough space for the supernovas to explode, so that they do not disrupt the other stars, and make sure to gather the fragments left behind for the sake of the other stars.

The gardener keeps working and keeps waiting. It only gets colder, cold enough to stop the gardener in their tracks, lamenting their solitary existence. But then, as they cradle what they know will be the beginnings of new stars, as they begin to sow what will be the seeds of those stars, they are for a moment taken in by the beauty. It is worth it, in the end. It is worth it, because it will always be so beautiful. They are the only one who can keep it that way, and so their laments do not last long, and they just wrap themselves up against the increasing cold and carry on.

And so, the cycle continues.

And so, they keep going.