At the foot of the tree, in the shaded patch of moss the fifth maiden had been tending all afternoon, his daughter was being pampered.
The youngest of the group knelt on a folded silk cloth at the base of the trunk, with Rosie cradled on her lap, and the dryad princess was being subjected to the absolute peak of elven grooming attention.
Two slim elven hands were running a fine-toothed silver comb through the vine-strands of Rosie's hair. A shallow dish of fragrant oil sat at her knee, the comb dipped between strokes.
The petals teased loose by it were caught carefully in her free palm and tucked aside in a saucer rather than dropped, because a petal off a Geim child was a thing to be archived, not thrown away. Rosie's amber eyes had gone half-lidded under the rhythm of the strokes as her tiny green hands waved slow lazy circles in the air at nothing in particular.
"Rosie's hair is being brushed."
The dryad princess announced it dreamily to the courtyard at large.
