Silk Merchant's Daughter

In the quiet hours before dawn she rises to tend the mulberry trees her family’s wealth relies on the delicate leaves unfolding like tiny hands in prayer to the sky’s pale light her own hands moving deftly among the branches as she inspects the silkworms’ gentle labors their cocoons a promise of the fine threads that will be her dowry and her fate

The trees stand like sentinels around the house their limbs outstretched in a gesture of protection but she knows the world beyond this garden is full of uncertainties and hidden dangers the markets where her father’s goods are sold the strangers who come and go with the seasons and the rumors of a world beyond the mountains