Nenra nodded curtly as Zakroti mulled over the idea of a plague. He seemed rather horrified by the idea, and to some extent she could understand why, though it was a truth that she and everyone she’d ever known had grown to live with. She took the offered pewter cup with a nod and a quiet “thank you” to the servant who brought it. An embarrassed tinge of red crept up her neck and ears as she drank.

To think she was being [i]waited on[/i]. Like some kind of noble. As if. Her family would never have let her hear the end of it.

Miry, intently listening to the conversation, signed her agreement to Zak’s mutterings. It was common knowledge to most (well-educated) Gems; the blistering pox (so called for the tiny blister-like boils it created across the surface of one’s skin, ultimately inside the mouth, throat, and even lungs too in the most severe cases) had likely been carried back from the Yugrin of the southern wastes by Drakken soldiers returning home. It never did seem to leave the small towns of the south-central farmlands, at least – the time which it lasted was too short for it to travel well, but it had been a generational affliction in some regions for the better part of decades, stumping scholars and common folk alike.

[i]”As far as we know, Drakken aren’t affected. Some scholars think it’s a parasite spawned from the Yugrin; southern border towns are often stricken by it every few years. Some even say it’s a blessing of Vivari, protection against –“[/i] Miry wisely cut herself off before she could finish the thought, turning her attention to the pewter cup of water. A moment of concentration, her brow furrowed, and a layer of ice crystals formed on the inside wall of the cup; she swirled the water gently and they quickly melted down, but the result was her water being quite chilled to cut through the dust and heat. It was a trick she'd learned as a child, as did many other water gems. She extended a hand to Nenra, inquisitively shaping the signs for “cup” and “ice”, but the older bride ignored her.

“A blessing to protect against the Drakken brutes who would take us from our homelands,” Nenra finished Miry’s comment after just a second too long a pause. Miry shot her a look, which she ignored. “Though in most cases the symptoms are merely uncomfortable – and only for a few days! They’re almost never dangerous in any way, but they leave plenty of visible marks.” Most of her cousins and siblings bore scars of their past infections, bumpy, uneven swathes of skin with circular discolorations of red and white surrounding each, resulting in a deeply unsettling pattern covering much of their bodies. She’d been fortunate enough to never catch the pox, though, or if she had she was one of the few who never showed signs. “The Reapers don’t take anyone with marks that are visible. And the nobles don’t bother us at all, because they’re so scared of getting it and disfiguring the pretty posh people at their pretty posh courts. Even grain and textile tithes aren’t enough to entice them to brave it. But… once you’ve had it once you can’t get it again, so it doesn’t usually have a huge effect when it comes up – and it only does every ten years, give or take. But we’ve no idea where it comes from. We’ve burned the soil, cleaned our houses, built new houses, and it still returns.” She stared off absently into space, perking up again when Zakroti mentioned gardens.

She was certain he was trying to get her to talk, but all the same, she couldn’t help but flash a grin at the mention of beautiful flora. Especially around valleys of farmland, where earth magic collected, tilled into the ground by generations and generations, there were some delightful plants (and creatures, but that was beyond the point) to be found. Ordinary plants grew to extraordinary sizes under the influence of magic; there were rosebushes in the forest downstream that grew blossoms larger than a person’s head, and the ambient magic collected so strongly along the riverbank that everything – be it rose, water-lily, or simple reed-plant – grew with an iridescent sheen to its leaves and petals. 

She was uncertain if she should mention it, but her hands itched to go through her satchel of belongings, to hold the seed bundles. Some part of her was certain that it had to be a trick; he was prying with the intention of destroying that which she had brought, stripping the last of her homeland away from her desperate attempts to cling to it. But some part of her wanted to trust. Surely, if she said she had brought some of what was grown at home, he would not immediately have it burned – he was an academic, and a noble besides. Nobles appreciated pretty things, and academics foreign things, and so presenting a foreign, pretty thing was a sure way to get them to comply.

How ironic. A sharp laugh escaped her once again, her lips curling up. Miry glanced over to her inquisitively. [i]“Tell you not-now,”[/i] she signed, her hands clumsy and finger shapes uncertain – it was clear she was far more used to interpreting the sign than she was to constructing it. 

“If you seek simple garden weeds, perhaps I can assist you,” she constructed the phrase mentally, pausing before she finally said it, the formal words and lofty tone feeling awkward on her tongue. The formality slipped out of her voice quickly; so much for being proper and respectable.

“Any sort of plant can be grown anywhere, given the right attentions. It won’t be our river at home, of course – the water carries the magic and energy down from a dozen other villages upstream, and it seeps into the land and makes plants as grand as anything even from the king’s garden – but anything will grow with water and attention. Great Mother’s Roses would be the easiest to start a floral garden with.” She cast a disdainful look at the ground, before glancing to Zakroti out of the corner of her eye, wondering if he was familiar with the plant she mentioned.

Miry tensed up, signing something angry at Nenra and glancing anxiously to Zakroti as well, her eyes wide at the implications. Everyone knew of Great Mother’s Roses, the crowning jewel of the flower festival held in the city of Vivari. The festival was hosted by her disciples and attended by thousands, from the wealthiest of merchants and nobles to the poorest of farmers, to sell their wares and celebrate their great mother in the grandest temple in all the realm. The first year of the mandatory reaping, these festivities had been halted, the grounds searched. That year, every bride taken from the event had been a dancer, and bore a crown woven of iridescent, impossibly fragile Mother’s Roses in her hair. Well-intentioned lords tried to placate the Drakken, offering bushels and seeds of rare, beautiful flowers and trees and other commodities, spices and dyes and other grand, costly items in exchange for sparing their lovers and daughters, and the angry reapers laughed and took it all and extra maidens besides, leaving the festival in ruins and hundreds of grief-stricken folk left to clean up the pieces. 

As word of what happened had spread, the roses had become a sign of Gemmenite defiance – in as much a sense as their people understood it – graceful and delicate and also unflinchingly eternal. The flowers, though they took exceptional work to grow from seeds, were hardy once they’d taken root and near-impossible to kill; some said they spread like weeds, once they’d been introduced outside of the carefully-cultivated gardens that they originally came from. 

Families and friends of those had been taken began to grow the flowers, (which were incredibly delicate plants, fully-matured bushes only a few inches tall and leaves and full-bloom blossoms the size of a fingernail, with iridescent pastel petals so fine they were nearly transparent) and within merely a decade they had spread to every city, town, and village in the kingdom.  Given enough warning time, it had since become a tradition that those of Vivari’s daughters who were taken away would be given a bloom, hidden somewhere on her person (since Drakken reapers were seemingly instructed to tear them away if found.) 

It was intended as a subtle (or arguably not-so-subtle) jab. We remember; we are remembered. We are eternal. 

Unfortunately, the reality of it was that many were forgotten just as quickly as they were taken. It was Gemmenian legal culture to consider those who were taken dead; even if a bride was eventually permitted to return home, as happened in a few exceptionally rare cases early on, she would have been stricken from her family record as though she had died on the night of the choosing, removed from inheritance and genealogy alike. It had been quickly decided, the first year those reaped included legal heirs, to set a precedent of just that; it was far simpler than opening up the possibility of those returning home into turbulent political situations, and brutally kinder than permitting grief-stricken families to hold onto the hope that their lost daughters would someday return. 

Incredibly few ever, ever did.

Miry stopped her thought process before it could wander too far down the line of wondering if her family had spoken her name – or even thought it – since the night she had been taken, or if her urn had already been lowered into the wellspring, her name written in the family records to be “remembered” and soon forgotten. She stared intently at the inside edge of her water glass, eyes misting over.

Nenra met Zakroti’s eyes for a moment, wondering what the lord would say.