After They Cut Down My Bonded Tree, I Found a New Family

Summary

"Today is supposed to be a good day. We're choosing Wendy's dowry. Stop standing there bringing bad luck down on us!"

My mother pulled my sister back in disgust, afraid the blood I had coughed onto the floor would splash the silver-bound chest.

When a forest elf girl is born, her family plants a bonded tree for her, a tree that lives and dies with its owner. When a daughter marries, her eldest brother takes the old branches the tree has dropped on its own and builds her a dowry chest, a sign symbolizing a lifelong covenant of love and kinship.