The Canopy Throne

Ceiba the kapok — emergent to 70 meters, silk-flossed, buttressed like a cathedral — holds the Throne above the rainforest’s second sky. Her court: Bertha the brazil nut, Hura the sandbox tree (spike-armored, pods that detonate, treated with the respect due to ordnance), Bola the cannonball tree, Dorada the strangler fig (she keeps the doors, and has replaced several), and Banyu the banyan — a one-tree forest who could secede at any time. Court politics: who sits highest, whose roots get the sunlight, and what the strangler fig knows. She knows everything. She says nothing.

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