---
Each of the five plant women turned away from the outer edge and faced inward.
Their thorns lowered. Flower-mouths went still. Their bodies bent with slow, graceful precision. It was not collapse. It was not blind worship. It was the kind of deep instinctive acknowledgment that belonged to creatures who understood rank in their blood before they understood words.
Then the giant Flesh-Treant moved.
The great flesh-tree fortress did not kneel. Something that large could not do anything so human. But its root-mass lowered. Its branch-arms folded inward slightly. The huge palm-mouths closed. Its many eyes blinked once together, then half-lidded in a stillness that somehow carried the same meaning the others had shown more openly.
It had bowed in its own way.
Bat Bat's mouth opened.
Then Leaf moved.
