The Aegean in the Garden

Frau Holda had decided that morning to cut a fresh stalk of everlastings, perhaps for a dinner table bouquet. She stood in her garden holding a cutting and remembered how much her mother used to like them. They would have been sprinkled at her feet before a hunt, or occasionally (though less successfully) if Holda had just broken something.
Holda hadn't thought of her in a while.

She thought of Alba, and how she would coo at the Oneiroi in the elms as Artemis cradled her.
Holda thought of the New Boy - the Cedar tree. Artemis was always fond of that tree. She had helped plant it when the seed was brought. Holda saw her mother in her mind's eye, cold and stretched out on that bed... so small and dry. They had found her in '26.

Holda noticed she was standing among anenome with petals crimson red. She looked down into her hand and found a stalk not of everlasting, but of aconite... the poison wolfsbane she would watch her mother apply to the solstice arrows when she was very little, so very long ago.

...War and death were coming.