Lleu Llaw Gyffes

Math ap Mathonwy and Gwydion, the magicians, gathered meadowsweet and broom and oak blossom from the hillside above Cwn Hyfel, pressing the petals together with their hands until the flower face opened and she was there, Blodeuwedd, the woman made of bloom.

They made her as a gift for Llew, a great warrior, whose mother had cursed him never to have a woman of any race on Earth as his wife.

So the magicians gave him a wife who wasn't any race, who was meadowsweet and oak, who smelled of the hillside after rain.

The thing about making a woman from flowers is that flowers have their own nature.

They turn toward whatever warms them, and no magician's hand can hold them facing a direction they don't choose.

She found Gronw Pebyr on a hunting day, and she turned toward him as the meadowsweet turns toward the sun.

Not because she was faithless, because she was made of something that reaches, and the warrior Llew was not the warmth she reached for.

They punished her, of course.