by Pravy Jha

When the oracle said I would blossom, my mother began sewing. Not clothes. Not shrouds. Petals.

She stitched silk into crescents and pinned them to my shoulders so that when the wind caught, I would look almost convincing. Our village had lost three girls already that spring. One became wisteria and strangled the well. One became foxglove and poisoned her own brothers. One became a climbing rose and tore the roof off her father’s house with the insistence of her growth.

It was considered an honor.

It was considered inevitable.

“Blossoming,” the elders said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a girl to split open and root herself to the earth.

But I did not want to root. I wanted to walk.

✿

The first sign is always the scent.

You begin to smell sweet even when you sweat. Bees begin hovering too close to your mouth. Ants trail your footprints as if you are already leaking nectar. I noticed it in the mornings. My pillow damp with something fragrant. My hair sticking together like damp pollen. I would shake it loose and pretend it was just oil. Just adolescence. Just ordinary growing.

But in the market, the old women began nodding knowingly.

“She’s almost in bloom.”

The way they said bloom made my spine itch.

✿

In the old stories, it is always framed as a gift. Persephone swallowed seeds and the world split into seasons. Daphne ran and turned to laurel to escape a god’s hands. The girl who refused a prince became a chrysanthemum that bloomed only at night.

They call it transformation.

They never call it disappearance.

✿

The fever comes next.

It arrived on a Tuesday.

My skin burned but I did not shiver. Instead, I felt pressure. A pushing from inside, like fists pressing against the lining of my ribs.

I ran to the river, because if I was to become anything, I wanted it to be something wild. Something with teeth. Something that moved.

I submerged myself to the neck. The water steamed faintly around me. For a moment, I thought I could feel stems pressing beneath my skin. I bit my own arm to make sure it was still flesh.

Blood came. Red, not sap.

I laughed so hard the river carried the sound downstream.

✿

That night, I dreamt of the Fae. Not the winged, delicate kind. The old kind. The kind who live under root systems and braid their hair with worm-cast and bone. They stood at the edge of my bed and inspected me.

“Too stubborn,” one of them muttered.

“She won’t open,” said another.

“Crack her,” a third suggested.

I woke up with dirt under my fingernails.

✿

My mother watched me constantly after that.

She kept windows closed so pollen wouldn’t “trigger” me. She fed me broth with crushed basil, as if herbs could convince other herbs to behave.

“You’ll be beautiful,” she whispered once, pressing her palm to my cheek.

“I already am,” I replied. She flinched.

Because blossoming is not about beauty.

It is about control.

✿

The day the bees arrived in earnest, I understood what the oracle meant. They swarmed the apple tree first, then the fence posts, then me. Not stinging. Just waiting.

I stood very still in the courtyard while the village gathered.

“She’s ready,” someone whispered.

Ready for what? To split open? To root myself in the dirt where everyone could admire me without ever asking what I wanted? The pressure in my chest surged again.

For one terrifying second, I thought I would give in. That petals would tear through my collarbones. That my mouth would fuse shut and become a blossom center. That I would feel the horror of stillness forever.

Instead—

Something else happened.

✿

My feet did not root.

They cracked the stone. Not gently. Not delicately. The courtyard tiles split under my heels. The bees scattered. A tremor rippled outward from my body, through the earth, through the orchard, through the fields.

The apple trees did not bloom. They shed their blossoms entirely. A snowfall of white petals drifted around us. Every flower in the village dropped itself at once. Silence fell so thick it felt like soil packed in the lungs.

✿

The Fae returned that night. This time they were smiling.

“She did blossom,” one said.

“Just not into what they expected,” another replied. Because blossoming is not always about becoming a flower.

Sometimes it is about becoming weather.

✿

In the days that followed, nothing grew.

Seeds refused to sprout. Vines curled back into themselves.

The elders panicked. “You’ve cursed us.”

“No,” I said. “I’ve interrupted you.”

Because here is the secret no one writes in the old myths:

Blossoming is a transaction. The girl becomes static. The village receives abundance. She roots; they harvest. She flowers; they feast.

I refused to pay.

✿

Eventually, things began to grow again. But differently.

Wildflowers pushed up between floorboards. Mushrooms appeared in the granaries. Vines climbed inward, not outward. Growth no longer obeyed fences. It no longer decorated doorways politely. It spread like laughter.

It spread like rebellion.

✿

My mother no longer sews petals. She gardens. Carefully. Respectfully. She asks before pruning. She thanks me before cutting.

When the oracle passes me in the market now, she does not meet my eyes. Because she had predicted a blossom. She had not predicted a season.

✿

Some nights, I still feel the pressure beneath my ribs. But it is not petals anymore.

It is thunder.

And when I walk, grass bends toward me—not because I am sweet, not because I am nectar—but because I am a movement. Because I refused to root.

Because sometimes the most mythic thing a girl can do is to stay human.

❀✿❀

Pravy Jha (she/her) is a student writer from India whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Blue Marble Review, Last Syllable Literary Journal, and the anthologies Upon Learning That and Rooted In: Rite. She won second place in Writers’ Hour Magazine’s “The Doorway” contest for her piece “The Door That Waited.”