White-Flowered Also
Daisies nodded in the cracks of the hilltop road’s pavement, so innocuous Míriel’s heart was near bursting. The charade of a procession followed behind her, and the flowers would be trampled and swept by cotton trains of the many hopefuls for the King’s favour. For rumors had grown loud that that day would grant Pharazôn immortality, a gift in time to be bestowed on them also, flies in amber, perfectly preserved forever.
It only took the limits of humanity. It only took colonies being pillaged of life to be sacrificed in in the temple fires, strapped to the kindling that had been Nimloth, the Line of Kings, her line. She was powerless to stop any of it, and her only consolation the vision she’d received, of a fountain raining onto a sapling’s roots. But standing on a dais in the temple at last with her servants behind her, came a feather-light touch to her hand, the curl of Nénumë’s well-loved fingers in hers for a moment, then something soft and weightless in her palm.
When she opened it: The daisies, though bruised and uprooted, and Nénumë’s breath by her ear. “Lady, dare to hope. Not the tree, but white-flowered also.”