Cinnabar

Cinnabar bleeds, and the world pays for the blood. The dragon's blood tree of Socotra — umbrella canopy, upturned like a parasol — exudes a deep red sap the ancients traded as medicine, dye, and magic, worth its weight in legend. The wound is the wealth: each cut weeps crimson, seals, scars into the bark's history. She sets her own price, and it is never low. "My blood built the myths," she tells the young desert trees who flinch at the tapping knife. "Dragons, they said. Let them. A good story is worth more than sap." The Desert Court, which counts every liter, counts hers twice — once as water, once as wonder. Her canopy shades the limestone plateau; her roots grip stone that has no business growing trees. Red, she insists, is not a warning. It is a signature.