Lyra walked closer, and the swirling energy around Tayo slowly settled, but it didn't disappear completely. It stayed close, like a loyal pet. "I felt it again," Lyra said, her voice soft. "The wild energy. It grew so strong, I knew you were here." She sat down next to him by the fountain. "That was amazing, Tayo. You didn't just use the energy, you... connected with it."
Tayo felt his face get a little warm. "I was just trying to feel it," he said. "Like you said. It feels so different from the way they teach me in the house."
Lyra nodded. "They teach control," she said. "Like putting a river in a straight, stone channel. It's neat, it's safe. But they lose the river's true strength, its life. The wild energy... it is the world's heart. It is messy and powerful, and it doesn't follow rules made by people." She looked around the grove. "This place is special. The city's neatness hasn't fully reached here. The energy is more... free."
She started to talk more about the old stories. She told him how the Great Mind made the world, and how the energy was one whole thing. Then, the accident, the shattering, when the Mind broke into pieces. The energy broke too, becoming the chaotic, wild energy of today. "The Primeator and Nuwa," Lyra said, "they understood this energy. They worked with its wildness, not against it. That's why they were so powerful. They were part of the world's true nature."
Tayo listened, fascinated. Her words were like cool water on a dry land in his mind. They explained the echoes, the feeling that his lessons were wrong. "But why do people in the city fear it?" he asked.
"Because it's not predictable," Lyra said. "It cannot be fully controlled or owned. People in the city like order. They like knowing what will happen. The wild energy is a reminder that the world is bigger, older, and more powerful than their walls and rules. It reminds them of the shattering, of a time when everything broke. They don't want that to happen again."
Talking with Lyra felt easy and right. They were like two parts of a puzzle that fit together. She knew the stories he felt in his bones, and he had the power that the stories described. Their friendship, born in the wild heart of the garden, was growing stronger with every shared secret.