Sumiko Saulson

These are the top 6 Character excerpts from the Character challenge.

Character 1: Silt and Bone by Jess Landry

Growths of moss and cobwebs littered the branches, the falling water wiping some of them away into the rising water.
On the throne sat a motionless woman who looked as though she’d been carved from a birch tree. Her delicate features and ashen skin shimmered in the struggling light; dark, horizontal lines and black knots speckled every inch of her visible surface, even her eyelids. Roots spilled from her head: five long, thick stems that thinned out as they joined the mosaic of branches behind her. Her arms lay on the armrests, strangely human yet twisted like intertwining branches, leading to slender fingers that extended into thin twigs sharp enough to slice through skin and bone. Her forehead extended past that of a human’s, ending in a ragged, broken trunk—a crown…