What is normal? A dandelion in the stony ground.

----

She was born with a name that meant 'peace' in fifty different languages. The Confederation of Dahn was repulsed by her; the Republic of Amhric rejected her; the Yokonian Empire ridiculed her. Her father was dead. her mother was exiled. And all the children of Deus who were her eternal siblings could not look upon her face for the rapture of death that they feared.

She lived on a rock.

It was a nice rock, all things considered. She thought it more beautiful than every one of the seven seas of Detroit, though they were each more stunning than the rest and she had seen them all, least to greatest, and been awed by the azure and emerald and lapis lazuli that formed their icy depths. Her rock, however, was plain and dark and dusty, fraught with frozen winters and often laid to waste by the blistering heat of a black sun, and she loved it.

There was a single living thing upon the rock, a single speck of life that made her home so beautiful; and though not a soul would ever set foot upon her domain or speak to her in kindly tones again or bring her frozen heart away from the exile they had struck her with, she lived in happiness. For when winter's harshest furies had abated, and it had struck its claws against the unforgiving stone of the land so often that they had become thin and weary, and before the summer's careless heat dawned upon her home, there would come a time of peace.

And in that gentle transition was a balm to her ravaged soul, a sight that brought tears to her blank silver eyes though she had not been programmed to cry, to have human emotion. There would come a season that she likened to the eternal spring of Tokino - and so short, it was. Short, but long enough for the persistent stubbornness of nature to take hold, to grasp with tenuous fingers in the oxygen depleted atmosphere for some semblance of life, as she could not.

Though the stony ground held no nourishment, no kindness for a species that thrived on gentle care, still would nature grow. A microscopic shoot, at first, mounding stone plain like a tiny volcano, a verdant eruption into the dust and dark. The color was sickly at first, pale yellow and white in a blend that made a likeness of soured milk. But against all odds it grew stronger, hour by hour gaining sweet green color and sweet green scent that made her wires cross inexplicably. The simple form of a toothy edge to the single leaf; the short, stunted stem that she knew from distant memory (was it hers, the memory?) would be hollow and lined with bitter milk; and the dark, round bud that rested atop it.

Here, she knew, it thrived for light, and would unveil itself for nothing less. As the sun slowly burned an empty path from the horizon on to its zenith, she raised a hand and made a little light. A little less than the year before, and less still than the year before that - and not long, now, until it wouldn't be enough - but it was sufficient, and she cried forbidden tears as the golden petals sprung from their confinements; one, two, three, a hundred. More captivating than the thousand spires of Ijaad. More beautiful than all the jewels in the mines of Kabul.

And she knew with every fiber of her being that she would never leave this wasteland, not for her mother or her sisters or her brothers or every kingdom in the far reaches of the universe -

For she had found a home where she was truly normal.