Petal Willowbloom's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Petal Willowbloom stepped onto the sea glass path that led to the guardian's threshold. The small stone cabin waited at its end, roofed in lily pads. She had come to be seen. She had come to be chosen. But her hands were empty. She stopped beside a stone heart resting in the moss, ivy curled across it, a two-toned lotus open at its center. The forest had made this. She had not. Bringing it would be borrowing beauty, not offering it. Shame pressed against her ribs. Every petitioner left something. She had nothing shaped by her own care. Then she knelt. She gathered smooth river rocks from the shallow water and stacked them, smallest at the top. She pressed moss into the gaps. She tucked tiny rosebuds between the stones, one for each season she had spent guarding roots no one watched. The small tower stood waist-high when she finished. It was not grand. It was hers. She lifted it carefully and carried it the last steps to the cabin door. She set the cairn on the threshold stone and stepped back. The forest went quiet around her. Something inside the cabin shifted, listening. Her offering had been received.