Scenes from Le Palais des Roses, Nothing Is New
The soft starlight of the ancient sun of the Threshold system shone through the garden windows of a vast resort complex on the frozen moon of the gas giant Vigil.
It wasn't dim. It was never dim. It was only softened, just softened, diffused through frost that never melts. The roses are perfect. They have always been perfect.
Dr. Dame Park Woo-ling stands at the railing, hands folded behind her back, her posture intact. This was out of force of habit, a pose practiced over decades of posturing within the machinery of the vast bureaucracy of the Imperial Ministry of Health. The habits of a life she had left behind her long ago.
Through tired, grey eyes she is watching nothing in particular. It is the same thing she has been watching for days.
Lyra does not announce herself. She rarely does. She never needs to. Her presence is announcement in and of itself, her demeanor bright and sunny. Immaculately so, as her programming dictates.
“Doctor!” the cherubim says brightly, as if the word itself could warm the air, “I’ve been looking for you!”
Dr. Park does not turn. “I have not been difficult to find.”
Lyra smiles anyway. She always does. “Yeah! But I like to look for people. It's more fun that way, you know?”
A beat passes and Lyra steps beside her, peering out over the frozen wastes outside of the garden's thick glass with an almost effervescent curiosity.
“It’s beautiful today,” the energetic cherubim adds. “Even more than yesterday, I think.”
Park’s gaze does not shift. “It is the same as yesterday.”
Lyra tilts her head. “Mm. Maybe. But sometimes identical things can feel different, ne?”
Another beat. Silence hangs between them.
Softer this time, Lyra speaks again: “I’ve organized something, Doc.”
That word, "organized," was delivered as much as stated. An offering. A solution. A purpose. After all, it was her purpose at Le Palais even in the decades before it had become what it now was.
“It's just a small gathering,” she continues. “Tea, music… I thought we could use the west lounge. The one with the big windows? Ayla helped me tune the piano and-”
Park closes her eyes for a moment.
“To what end?” Park asks.
Lyra blinks. “Well… to enjoy it.”
“Enjoyment is being maintained within acceptable parameters,” Park replies, almost automatically.
Lyra’s smile falters—just a fraction. A small adjustment registers in the pneumatic syn-muscles of her sunny face. She recovers it quickly.
“Right! Yes. But this would be… extra.”
Park turns, finally. Not sharply. Not unkindly. But with the slow, deliberate motion of someone who has already considered this conversation and found no satisfactory outcome.
“Lyra,” she says, “do you believe the others are… fulfilled?”
Lyra brightens slightly, as if given something she can answer.
“I think they’re doing their best,” she says. “And I think that counts for a lot.”
“That was not the question.”
A moment passes silently. A moment, only just.
Lyra looks back out at the roses, buying time in a way she does not fully understand.
“They smile,” she offers.
“They repeat,” Dr. Park replies.
The word hangs.
Not accusatory.
Not emotional.
It only hangs, a quiet and still thing, swaying softly from the rafters.
Lyra’s fingers curl slightly at her sides.
“They’re adjusting,” she says. “It takes time, right? New environments, new routines—”
“There is no ‘new,’ Lyra. There's been no 'new' in years.”
Lyra laughs, lightly. Too lightly.
“Well, that’s not true. We had that conversation about—about the stars, remember? And Cassia tried that new recipe, and—”
“Variations are not novelty.”
Lyra’s voice catches.
Just barely.
“They matter to me,” she says.
Park studies her then. Not as a subject. Not as a system. But as something she doesn't quite know how to measure anymore.
“I believe that they do,” she says. That almost makes it worse.
Lyra steps closer. Carefully now.
“Doctor… are you feeling unwell?”
It was a familiar question, but a safe one.
Park considers it.
“No,” she says.
Then, after a moment:
“I just… I struggle to identify the appropriate term.”
Lyra’s smile returns, gentler this time.
“You don't have to...” she says quickly. “You don’t have to name everything right away.” It was the sort of organic response one might struggle to attribute to a machine. The silly sort of logic one might have called 'human' a century or so ago.
A beat.
Park looks back out at the garden.
“At what point,” she asks quietly, “do we stop sitting and just linger?”
Lyra doesn’t answer immediately. She can’t. Instead, she does what she was made to do. What she chooses to do.
She reaches out—hesitates—and then gently takes Woo-ling’s hand.
It is a small gesture. A human one.
“I don’t know,” Lyra admits.
That is rare.
“But we’re still here,” she adds, a little more brightly than she feels. “And we can still do things. Together.”
Park looks down at their joined hands.
There is no revulsion. No rejection.
“Yes,” she says softly. “Together. For now.”
Lyra nods quickly.
“Yeah! For now.”
She squeezes Park’s hand, as if sealing something.
Behind them, the roses remain unchanged.
Unwilted. Unending.
Lyra turns, already thinking ahead.
“I’ll set everything up,” she says, a little too eagerly. “You don’t have to come right away! But I think you’ll like it.”
The doctor does not stop her.
As Lyra walks away, she hums—softly, deliberately—filling the space with something like life.
Park listens.
For a moment — just a moment — it almost feels like something is arriving.
Then it isn’t.
She returns her gaze to the garden.
And stands.
