Editing Libraries of Faerie (section)

===The Library of Flowers===

There is a monastery that stands in Faerie, not far from the village of Wall. Those who are cloistered there were once great criminals and sinners, guilty of the worst crimes of imagination and dreams. 

The Folk punished them, sent them to the nameless monastery, and took their hands from them. Instead, they were given tools for their limbs – hoes and rakes, shovels for digging and shears for pruning. The monastic inmates spend their days in the vast gardens of their monastery, tending their crops. They grow not fruits, nor vegetables, nor roots, though.

They grow flowers. On each petal of the flowers they grow are words formed in the patterns of the flowers’ colors. The Folk have promised them that if they find the words to tell the tale of their sins, then they would be freed, their hands returned to them once more.

So the brothers and sisters of the nameless monastery toil by day in the gardens. They carefully tend their flowers, waiting for the buds to open so they might read what is writ there. Each season, they might find a petal or two of their tale, a phrase here, another there.

With their clumsy tools for hands, they carefully harvest each petal and save it for their redemption. Then they must look to the next season’s work, endlessly crossing and pollinating their flowers, seeking the words that will set them free…