myth for iguleni

Even the empress waivers. Or her secret is that she has wavered the entire time teetering in her palace of limestone, where the grass people have dug out the pit.

Those who were living in the limestone quarry, built their rooms, built their roofs to protect falling stones. Meanwhile, the empress began to change. And the sweet day rose, but it was not yet so.

The morning tasted bitter. She would have longed for a different son, a different trail through her life that would have led to other temples, to a quiet breeze, appreciation for sunsets, so that when she rose morning would make sense. The vines instead made labyrinths to nowhere, and the world became louder and louder as the kitchens strained against growing roots in their mechanisms, and tractors split the lianas that were left, and then those lianas grew up tenfold as they rooted.

Sola never was the sun. She was only ever a reflection of what she could have been. The transformation did not take long. The need for her to change so profound, she could not move.

And the sun rose up pale through the layers of vines cocooning the city. All had been a mistake. The grassmen, the rising sun, the rising in power. leaving Ivy, her precious son. All of it.

The rays saw nothing where she lay but a pale and fleshy, bitter root beside the empress's old rotting squash, a poison onion. ‘A curse,’ the attendant thought, when he found what was left of the empress. He took the root and placed it on her throne nonetheless.

And yet, we are blessed with reflections.