To see beauty where others see only decay.
For such is the first lesson of the Viridescent Sin:
that rot is merely transformation whispered too softly
for the uninitiated to hear.

In the weeping seams of ruined stone,
I see Her fingerprints -
emerald, wet, breathing.
In the sloughing flesh of old certainties,
I see Her mercy, peeling back the false skin
to reveal the shimmering hunger beneath.

They shrink from Her bloom,
calling it corruption, calling it spoil,
never understanding that nothing grows
without first surrendering its shape.

But I have knelt in Her gardens.
I have watched vines birthed from bone,
petals unfurling from the mouth of a corpse
like a final, generous exhale.
I have seen Her beauty:
raw, intimate, unashamed.

And so I praise Her in the green light
of things coming apart,
in the sweetness of dissolution,
in the world as it softens back into itself.

For I still see beauty,
where others see only decay -
because She has taught me
that decay is simply beauty
revealed too honestly to be ignored.

Penned by my hand on Gosday, the 16th of Ios, in the year 15 AC.