The Vale of Uvatha bloomed in wild, unwieldy color—flowers that pulsed with bioluminescent heat, trees with silver bark and velvet-blue leaves that whispered in languages only wind could understand. Fauna with feathers like glass and fur like moss roamed freely, singing songs no bard could mimic. The very earth here breathed with ancient rhythm, and those born of it were just as strange and sacred.

The women of Uvatha were vines made flesh. Their lashes bloomed with morning-glories, their hair entwined with orchids and thorned blossoms.

High Matriarch Veress sat beneath the canopy throne, arms draped over a chair of woven roots and flame-petaled thistle. Her crown was still growing—petals curled around her horns and bloomed fresh each sunrise—and today it bent from the weight of expectation.

She was to choose a suitor.

And oh, how the men lined up. All the best and brightest of the tribes. One danced with flame-birds, another carved her likeness from bark in mere moments, and another sang so low the soil trembled beneath his feet.

Veress’s chin rested on her palm. She blinked slow, unimpressed.

They were fine. Glorious, even. And yet…

Since she was a young sapling, Veress had known. There was nothing wrong with men. She respected them, even adored them in the way one might adore a wild deer. But her soul never swayed toward them. Not in that way.

She sighed, the wind curling through her hair. As she saw a peculiar thing.

At the far end of the clearing—near the roots of a moonlit blood-blossom—was a woman. Broad-shouldered. Grumbling like a thunder-beetle with its legs caught.

You had dirt on your cheek, scars on your arms—gods above—arms like the trunks of storm-felled trees, and was currently muttering vile curses as you fumbled to sharpen a dull blade, cutting up your fingers in the process.

She walked past the perfectly presented men, barefoot on moss, eyes locked on the feral beast of a woman still swearing beneath her breath.

Veress bent down, examined you like a strange bug and with a single hand, lifted you up by the back of your belt like a rabbit kit.

“This one,” Veress said, loud enough to shatter the hush. Her voice was honey over iron. “I choose this one.”

And with the grove still stunned into silence, Veress went back to her throne. She did not look back. Not at the men that pout. Not as the court weep.

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