Overflowing with flowers bright Gregarious attracts many visitors. Denizens grow and export flowers. In the fields, Gregarians laugh and sing as they busy their hands.
At night, denizens wear flower crowns and eat petaled salads, slices of nut loaf, and lavender cakes. They load carts with flowers and journey to other lands. Children mist the flowers to keep them fresh. Other lands love the flower peddlers, so Gregarious stays well-supplied. They make perfume, too.
“We can always tell when the flower peddlers are coming rose, lotus, and peony scents precede them,” says the Guide of Peace.
Some shy lands do not welcome the talkative flower peddlers, but do not refuse them either. Gregarians sometimes leave flowers at the gates.
No flowers grow on the Hill of Shame. Monks labor in silence digging up old bulbs with bowed heads.
"What caused this barren patch in the middle of plenty? Must they atone for some misdeed?" asks Miss Doe Friend, but receives no answer.
The soil upon the hill changes color with the seasons, from rich black to pale brown and from rust red to parched yellow, and still it lies fallow. Wildflowers wither at the base of the hill.
The Shameful sit in judgement upon the rest of the world at the top of Shame Hill. Gregarians avoid Shame unless they come on important business looking for a lost flower or a rare bulb.
“Is there a way to restore this blight?” Miss Doe Friend asks.
"That's a question for children," says the Guide. "They envy the rich capitols of other lands and cry that it doesn’t seem right. But then they grow up."
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