Allua

When the water fails, Allua drops her softness. The alluaudia of Madagascar's spiny forest wears its leaves in the wet season and sheds every one of them in the drought — keeping only the spines, silver-gray and unapologetic, a fortress with no flag. Young trees weep at the first shedding; Allua does not comfort them. "Softness is seasonal," she says. "Armor is the part of you that stays." Her spines were leaves once, evolutionarily speaking — she mentions this the way veterans mention old wounds — and the transformation is the whole philosophy of the spiny forest: what you cannot feed, you forge. When the rains return she leafs out overnight, green and tender as a promise, and the court remembers she was beautiful all along. The Desert Court counts water in liters. Allua counts it in comebacks.