Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February 2026
In a speculative society where women grow literal flowers on their bodies — a phenomenon overseen by a bureaucratic “Scent Authority” — social status is determined entirely by which flower blooms on your skin. The story is narrated by Eleni, a young woman living in the shadow of her older sister Amelia, whose perfect pale pink rose earns the family an upgrade to Rosoideae, an affluent dome community where roses are prized above all other flowers.
Eleni’s mother, whose common mallow flower made her useful but unremarkable, has always accepted the system’s hierarchy with resigned gratitude, urging her daughters to “bloom where you are planted.” But Eleni quietly chafes against this compliance, sensing the injustice woven into every layer of their world — from the harvesting facilities where women labor until their gardens are depleted, to the unspoken ranking of flowers that determines a woman’s worth and freedom.
Everything shifts when Eleni meets Brix, her new neighbor in Rosoideae. Brix grows coltsfoot, a flower classified as a weed, and her mother forces repeated painful removals of her blooms to prevent the seeds from spreading and disrupting the gardens of higher-status women. The two form an immediate, deep bond — romantic and conspiratorial — and Brix becomes both Eleni’s anchor and her reason to imagine escape.
When Eleni’s own flower begins to emerge, she prays desperately not to be a rose. Her wish is answered in the most unexpected way: she grows dandelions, a flower believed to be entirely eradicated. When Brix’s coltsfoot begins to spread in response, they realize they share the same botanical family — the asters — marking them both as outcasts. Rather than despair, Eleni sees this as liberation. She proposes they flee to Asteraceae, a dome rumored to be free of the Scent Authority’s rules, where wildflowers are welcome and women can live as they are.
Before leaving on Scattering Day — an annual celebration where the oldest gardens are finally allowed to seed freely — Eleni shares a quiet, unexpectedly tender farewell with Amelia. She discovers her seemingly perfect sister is quietly unhappy beneath her roses, and that Amelia has known about the escape plan all along, even helping cover for Eleni by silencing the bribed sentry. Their goodbye is bittersweet, full of rediscovered sisterly love and the unspoken acknowledgment that their paths must diverge.
That evening, amid the manufactured winds of the Scattering ceremony, Eleni and Brix unbind their hidden gardens for the first time in public. Their coltsfoot and dandelions release seeds into the wind in a moment of joyful defiance before the two slip unnoticed through the dome’s service exit into the open plains beyond.
The story closes with Eleni sending a final prayer after their drifting seeds — that they may bloom wherever they land — reclaiming her mother’s old adage not as a call for submission, but as a radical act of hope.
Melanie Mulrooney lives in Nova Scotia with her husband and a gaggle of kids. Her work has been published with Small Wonders, MetaStellar, Seaside Gothic, and others. When not writing or child-wrangling, she can be found reading, strolling through the woods, or volunteering in her community—usually with a cup of tea in hand, and always wearing comfortable shoes. Find her at melmulrooney.com.