Arauca

Arauca's branches are reptilian armor — sharp, scaled, spiraled like something the dinosaurs would recognize, because they did. When Victorian plant-hunters first saw her kind, a lawyer remarked it would puzzle a monkey to climb one, and the name stuck like a burr. Every decade some bold young Skyreach sapling takes the dare, and every decade Arauca holds her puzzle intact, needle-sharp and unbothered, while the climber retreats with dignity and scratches. She is not cruel about it; she even applauds the attempts. "Climb," she says, "and learn what two hundred million years of practice looks like." Her seeds are great sweet nuts the Mapuche have harvested for centuries, and she gives them freely — everything about her is generous except the climbing. The Missing Ring does not puzzle her at all. "Something survived that year," she says. "Ask the things with armor."