Myrtilla

Myrtilla throws a party that lasts a hundred days. The crepe myrtle blooms from summer into fall — crinkled flowers like tissue silk, white to pink to red — while other trees manage a week and call it a season. Her bark, mottled and peeling, is the invitation: come as you are, stay as long as you like. The Flowering Court sends envoys to study her stamina; she sends them home with petals in their hair. "Bloom is currency," the flowering ones say. "Then I am rich," says Myrtilla, "and I spend it all." Her secret is unglamorous: deadhead the spent flowers and she makes more, an endless encore for an audience of bees. The Painted Bark claims her for her bark; the Flowering Court claims her for her flowers. She lets them argue. It fills the hundred days.