No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

writing-prompt-s

You’ve just aided an old woman knitting by the side of the road, and she reveals herself as a goddess in disguise! Having passed her test and earned your place as the goddess’s chosen hero, she brings you back to her dwelling to choose a magical weapon or item, only to discover that a thief has completely cleaned out her stash!

The only magical gift she has left is the pair of knitting needles she was using in her “old lady” disguise.

elidyce

The young woman stood in the middle of the empty cavern, looking around. She seemed… untroubled. “This was thorough,” she said, her voice as calm and pleasant as it had been when she’d offered a helpless old woman a share of her bread and escort through the wood. “It looks professional, or at least well-planned. Did anyone know you were seeking a new chosen hero?”

The goddess blinked. In three thousand years, she had been so mortified before a hero only twice before… and then, one had cried and one had lost faith in her upon the moment. This one, new as she was, didn’t even seem troubled. “All the gods know,” she said slowly. “My last champion’s fall was… widely known.”

“I see.” The young woman knelt and examined the floor. “I see three, perhaps four distinct footprints,” she said, sitting back on her heels and looking up at her goddess. “And it would have taken at least one large cart or two smaller ones to move it all. I think I can track them, but I’ll be outnumbered. I don’t suppose you have any *other* caches of magical weapons?”

“No.” The goddess felt her throat tighten. “This was a collection that took millennia to build. All I have left is these.” She held out the knitting-needles she’d clutched, as the helpless old woman. “These are enchanted.”

Dark brows rose. “Hm. To do what?”

“They can knit anything.” It didn’t sound like enough of an explanation, and she gestured vaguely. “Well… anything that you can catch between them. The branches of a tree, the feathers of a bird, the hairs of a man’s head - even the dust of the roadside.”

“And what can one knit them into?” the young woman asked.

“That depends on one’s own gifts,” the goddess answered, surprised again. She hadn’t expected this young woman, carrying the bow and knife of a forester, with her sun-darkened brown skin and sun-faded hair, to take much interest in magic knitting needles. “Your will… and your imagination.”

“Oh, I have those.” The young woman held out her hand for the knitting needles, and she did hold them as if she knew how to use them. “Thank you, my goddess. I’ll bring your treasures back, if I’m able.”

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treemigration

The Pink Lady Slipper Orchid,

Cypripedium acaule,

A classic upland acidophilic species which thrives in extremely rich oak-hickory/ pine upland communities with little overcrowding. If you are to find this orchid in true boone, you know you’ll always remember why they were doing so well to begin with. Usually I find these communities on a seep shelf of a sandstone member overlooking a cliff and if they aren’t there it will be a south facing upland slope, steeply graded, with dense scubland tree species( Sassafras, Virginia pine, American Mountain Holly, Witch Hazel.) and an ever present thicket of greenbrier. Either/or all fantastic habitat shows browsing by deer doesn’t seem to be an issue with well established populations.

The three photos above were taken at a relatively decent population(168 strong) that demonstrates the scrubland habitat mentioned. Unfortunately, I can only take a photo that captures a specific number of them without potentially damaging the population. Infact, this number might have been low already considering reversion to protocorm dormancy which i’d like to explain in a seperate post. With that said, it’s always a nice thing to fit 36 individual blooms in one photo.

The second set is at a different community, most of which were under a different kind of shade,( mostly oak); but, still did well overlooking a south facing slope on a sandstone bluff. The leftmost photo in this set demonstrates the pale color prior to full bloom; sometimes the true phenotype is actually white, this is fairly uncommon though compared to the pink majority. The other two photos were taken by underlighting to show the distribution of windows, sites of little pigment. That act as light guides for insects trapped inside. As you can see, the back of the labellum allows light to pass through fairly easily while the front is more colorful; although the sides of the main invagination seem to have a similar windowed effect. The evolutionary mechanisms involved with flowers that display these pouched labellum, Phragmipedium, Phaphalopedallum, and Cypripedium, are some of the most widely known highly evolved mechanisms of trickery this planet has seen with plants floral displays. These species require a bee of a specific size to seek out an extrafloral nectary or a cavitation mating pheromone and once inside they either find no true nectary nor any mating site and are forced to leave up the back towards the stigmatic column first and then out of of side where staminodes have a pollinia. If the bee, in C. acuale’s case = Bombus spp., already has a pollinia attached to the correct side of it’s head it via sticky translator arm, it will press this pollen mass into the compatible section of the stigmatic collum ensuring cross pollination. Once the first mass is removed the second mass, if there is one, is attached on the way out so that the cycle repeats once again. I encourage you, if you have a day off, to go botanize some mid May day when it’s nice and sunny and go watch this occur. It is entertaining to say the least.

The third and final photo was from a pine mat population growing in the midrange of the hillside under a Pinus strobilus.