Ravenala

Ravenala runs the only free inn on the road. The traveler's palm — not a true palm, a bird-of-paradise grown to treehood — holds rainwater in the cupped bases of its great fan leaves, and thirsty travelers have drunk from those leaf-chalices for centuries. She has never charged. "Water," she says, "is not mine to sell. The sky left it; I only held the cup." Her fan spreads east-west like a compass some say travelers used to navigate — another legend she neither confirms nor denies, innkeeper's privilege. The Wanderers, who claim no territory, staff their rest stops at her trunk: the shade, the water, the directions. Young trees ask how the inn stays open with no income. She rustles her fan. "The road pays," she says, "in travelers. I am rich in arrivals."