Sky Isles Flora
The floating islands of the Sky Isles are green. Lush, wind-swept grass covers them, stunted trees grip their edges with roots hanging in the open air, and the air smells of pine and of the sweet sky-flowers. Among them grow rare plants that need the thin, bright air of great height, and gatherers climb to the Sky-Gates for them.
Appearance
The grass is long, fine, and pale green, combed flat in one direction by the wind and silvered on the side it shows. Through it grow the sky-flowers, low, star-shaped blossoms of azure, white, and gold that turn to the light. Their scent is honeyed and carries a long way on the thin air.
The trees are small and old-looking, pine and twisted hardwoods no taller than a man, their trunks bent and their crowns flattened. At an island’s rim they lean out over the void, and their roots come out of the earth beneath it and hang in the air in long pale tangles, wet with the mist of the waterfalls that pour off the edges. The rare plants are smaller still: cushions, rosettes, and mosses on the rock, in colours that seem too bright for living things.
Habitat and Range
They grow on every island large enough to hold soil, from a rock with a tuft of grass to the great masses of earth that carry woods. The rarest grow on the highest and brightest islands, and on the rock of their undersides beside the glowing crystal cores.
Behaviour and Temperament
They live as mountain plants do, low, tough, and turned to the wind. Their hanging roots drink the mist of the falls as much as the soil. Islands drift, collide, and spin, and the plants on them hold on.
Abilities
Under the zone’s law, weight answers to belief, and the plants believe nothing. They neither fall nor fly, and an uprooted tuft simply stays where it is let go. Seed travels on the wind from island to island, and sky-flower seed is said to float wherever it is blown.
Life Cycle
The grass and flowers grow and seed through a long, bright season under a sky that seldom storms. The trees grow slowly and live long, and a tree that loses its grip goes over the edge into the void, where it may land on a lower island or vanish in the mist.
Uses and Dangers
The Sky-Walkers draw sustenance from the air and sunlight and have little need of the plants. Visitors gather the rare high-air plants and sky-flowers as prized ingredients and sell them dear below. The plants themselves are harmless. The danger is the place: a gatherer who reaches too far over an island’s edge, or doubts as they lean, falls.
Lore and Belief
Below, people believe that sky-flower petals in the shoe make a climber sure-footed, and that a dried flower in the house keeps a mind from wandering. Those who gather them say the flowers do nothing of the sort, and that what keeps a gatherer up is a steady mind. Sky-Walkers, it is told, can tell the drift of an island by which way its grass lies.