![]() His honey-brown eyes take in the scene below. I turn away from the flames just in time to see Dez march up behind me. Mother of All, bless this soul into the vast unknown. ![]() Taking deep breaths, I try to compose myself, but the blessing still won’t leave my lips. But I remember flashes of a different fire, of cries and screams and helplessness. Words the Moria use when someone is moving from this life and onto the next. “Mother of All-” I start to say a blessing. In Esmeraldas, where the manzanilla grows so wild it takes over entire fields, its sweetness momentarily masks the acrid scent of homespun wool and rag dolls, abandoned in haste as the villagers run along the dirt paths to escape the flames.īut nothing covers the scent of burning flesh. The deceptively bitter flower with a yellow heart and white mane of pointed petals is prized for its healing properties not only in our kingdom, but in the lands across the Castinian Sea, ensuring a steady flow of gold and food into this tiny corner of the country. All common to Puerto Leones, but here, in the eastern provincia of the kingdom, the fire burns through something else: manzanilla. ![]() Vegetable gardens of ripening tomatoes, bushels of thyme and laurel. Bales of rolled hay amid a sea of golden grass. ![]() A FTER A WHILE, ALL BURNING VILLAGES SMELL THE SAME.įrom a hilltop, I watch as fire consumes the farming village of Esmeraldas. ![]()
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