by DannisWrites
Bess wakes from a single, searing dream. She was on a Diplomatic Service Team—the first to include Aryillan members—tasked with an impossible mission: establish the first Aryillan Embassy on Earth. The problem? Humanity remembered what the Aryillans were before their transformation. Monsters that preyed on people don't earn trust overnight, no matter how much they've changed. Then she's awake in Atlanta, where she's a PNG immigrant on a green card helping her family run their plant import business. A normal life. A quiet life. But the dream left something behind—a pull she can't resist. Bess grabs a bag of magnolia seeds and tells her sister she's going on a Walkabout. Her sister says she can't do that in Atlanta. Bess goes anyway. Following an instinct to a place she's only seen in her sleep, she's pulled aboard a ship and comes face to face with Perr, Prince of Aryll—heir to a kingdom of one hundred thousand worlds that is slowly dying. She will witness an entire civilization shed its monstrous form and become the peaceful people they once were. She will discover that her magnolia seeds share an ancient kinship with Aryll's mother tree. And she will learn that in a universe of staggering technology and alien power, the force that saves one hundred thousand worlds is something breathtakingly simple—the love one girl poured into a bag of seeds. Sometimes the most important journey starts when someone tells you it can't be done. [Participant in the 2026 Spring Writathon]
