I have been here for hours, long before the yellow hands of the sun could reach my shivering body, waiting. Simply waiting. The stars above that had enchanted me just nights before were beckoning me to glance up at them in delight. A cursory acknowledgement was all I could muster. The graceful trees with their coarse bark, leaves of silk, and sweet fruit, stood silent, already having been rejected by my focused concentration this solitary and dark early morning. My only companion, a small starfly, rested upon my thin shirt, which contributed little warmth to my trembling hands (an oversight I will remember on my next visit). But even he could not endure my silence. And now as I study the soil at my kneeling body, I wait. The opaque arms of the tuliema at last thrust through the black earth into the frigid night air, pulling, reaching, fighting, searching for light; the timing had to be exact. Only moments after each of the tuliema's three lifeless leaves fully left the earth's grave, the sun's arrows pierced the plant, injecting life, creating an explosion of color, a hue of yellow the sun itself coveted. I looked up with pleasure across the awakening field, flooded now in a sea of yellow.

Atrus, Serenol Age Journal