When Anelieika was a very young girl, she found a baby praying mantis trapped in a spider’s web. She carefully untangled each strand from the praying mantis and set it free in her garden, chastising it to be more cautious in the future. Over the summers, she would often sit in the garden behind her house, or wander barefoot through the tangled roses, watching the young praying mantises grow up to become hunters. She learned patience, and how to be still, for the only way to watch the praying mantis hunt was to be as careful and motionless as it was. In this way, she also learned to move in less time than the blink of an eye, and to know the perfect moment to strike.

Of course, she did what anyone else would do with such knowledge: she became an assassin. Her reputation spread through many lands. She commanded a steep fee and a single stipulation: she would kill in her own time, and not a moment before she was ready. It was for this reason that the king of the North Lands summoned her when he wished to kill a god. She did not ask why he might wish such a thing, only for the name of the god she might kill.

“Orchid,” said the king.

Anelieika shrugged her shoulders and named her price. The king of the North Lands accepted this, and presented her with a lock of his hair (as was customary when concluding a deal with any assassin). No money was exchanged; such business was conducted by the seconds of assassin and employer, and Anelieika could not have carried that sum unaided beside all that.

Anelieika thought on the prospect of killing the god Orchid. She drew her conclusion in seven breaths and thence traveled far to the south. As she traveled, she collected the seeds of orchids in bloom. She journeyed next throughout the tropical lands, collecting all the seeds of all the rarest orchids. When she had filled five sacks with the seeds of orchids, she found a fertile place beside the longest river of all the world and began sowing one seed every day.

The season for planting seeds passed, and the first orchids were eager to bloom in the tropical heat. Anelieika took her sharpest knife and cut the blooms off, letting them fall into the mud. Each day, a new orchid flower would bloom, and Anelieika would calmly walk through the acres of plants, and cut the flowers, and let them fall to the mud. On the fifth day, the god Orchid came to her and said, “Will you not cease murdering my children?”

Anelieika said, “No.” And, looking Orchid in the eyes, she cut off the blooms of that morning, letting them fall to the mud.

“Very well,” said Orchid, and vanished. Thus it continued, every day for another five days. The Orchid would ask Anelieika to cease her slaughter of the blooms, and she would have the same laconic reply. On the sixth day, she noted how Orchid trembled when he asked. On the seventh day, as she cut a bloom from another plant, the god Orchid, snatched it before it could strike the ground.

As his hands touched the petals, Anelieika stabbed him through the heart with her knife. Gods do not die easily, but if one touches the mortal world, it becomes mortal for the blinking of an eye. Finding the right instant, she passed her blade through the Orchid’s body, and so killed him.

The Orchid lay in the mud, with his life seeping into the wet earth. “I see you have killed me. Though I cannot fathom why, I beg a last request. Care for my orchids. You may take my seat among the gods if you wish. Only see to it that they prosper.” Leaving nothing else in the world buy his bargain, the Orchid died.

Anelieika observed the corpse with disinterest, but at last bent and cut a lock of his hair. Thus to this day she is both the Orchid and the assassin, and ever after orchids, like assassins, have only bloomed in the perfect moment.