myth for silky pear

When the serpent swept up, everyone in the town stopped in horror, and some, even in hope. Because the snow plants smothered, embraced, and subdued all - grass and townspeople alike. Some snow plants attached themselves to the grass, weakened as they were now being so far from their mountain home. Connected to one another, neither died. They became something else and wandered away.

Some fell to earth and were devoured by the snow plants who could not survive on a corpse alone.

Everyone was tired of baking, of fighting stubborn crabgrass to plant emmer in unhappy soil.

In the chaos, Sweetie’s mother walked out of the prison. Where she had lived for decades. Millennia. The grass people arrived so long ago now.

Bitter stood at the door waiting for her. All alone. Parents long gone. Family gone. On that day she told Sweetie what she had seen. Drawing power from the water, taking as much as she could so she could become strong and making Bitter’s family suffer - so much so they had to leave. Sweetie night have forgotten, unless the tulsi woman of the moon would one day remind her. Sweetie was of the moon so nothing would ever be steady for her again.

Bitter could feel the story we don’t know still. The struggle still lay heavy in her arms and sore on her back. All this time she had been crawling down the mountain meeting all the monsters as they went. She imagined them now, beating against the wall flowers and unable to get in.

She remembered every moment of her story, but no one would think to ask her. And she didn’t feel like talking anyway. She grabbed the tear that escaped Sweetie’s mother’s eye. It was not hers to begin with. She took all too much. And so Bitter drew the weeping out of her. To this day her heart is a lump of salt. Bitter blew and molded the water so it descended in rain, flooding the fields of emmer and making new streams to the passionfruit island. Every undead being twisted like whirlpools into the air and climbed the vine of the seafoam dragon, attaching themselves as winged seeds to the back of the creature.

The one mother of knives - Sweetie’s mother - the one who fought for the town and for her family, the one punished unceasingly for it looked up at the rising dead becoming seeds and could not weep the tears for they were gone all around her, she, now all dried up. But she remembered that one gold berry from the dead woman who made it finally into the earth long ago. If you look up in a tree and see a silky pear, it might be that dragon, bringing renewed hope, and the memory of a very watery time.

Sweetie’s mother stood there, watching Bitter walk away.