She remembered her mother's hands. Calloused, warm, smelling of yam flour and smoke. Her mother had not cried. Instead, she had pressed a seed into Fina's palm and whispered, "If the tree asks for your life, give it this instead. It won't know the difference until you're gone."
"That seed was your mother's name ," she said. "She gave it to you so that when I tried to consume you, I would choke on the one thing I cannot digest. A name freely given, never to be taken." Mother Village -Finished- - Version- Ch. 1 Fina...
Fina spun. A woman sat on a low stone at the base of the tree. She was old—older than the Council, older than the village itself, it seemed. Her skin was bark-brown and cracked like dry earth. Her eyes were two hollows with tiny flames flickering inside. She remembered her mother's hands
"No more tithes," Fina said.
"But now you're back," the woman continued, rising to her feet. Her joints cracked like breaking branches. "And the village is dead, Fina. All of them. Every family that fed me, I fed on in return. Only the children remain—trapped inside me, not alive, not dead. Waiting for a mother who never came." Instead, she had pressed a seed into Fina's
"Agreed."