But that which is called a Flower by any other name would still be as trusting and they were not to change her. In fact, she grew only more Hothouse-gorgeous as the bitterness poured down and off and around her and flooded the town, fertilizing crops, drowning fields, providing new homes for water birds and their babies, and bringing people from villages all around to swim in their beautiful blue lakes and marvel in the wonders of a village no longer called Numbskull but instead 'Miroslava' which means 'peace and glory.'
"Numbskull's Flower and the Well-Meaning Poets Society." First published in State of Imagination
— Meg Sefton
#short-story #slipstream #young-adult-fiction #beauty
