The Creation of the Juniper Tree

 


“Everyone has a flower except me,” the young teen whined to her mother.


“What are you talking about, Juniper?” asked Juno.


“Flowers mother!” She said as though that cleared it all up.


“Flowers,” Juno repeated back to her daughter.


“Yea, flowers. Iris has one, Krokus has one, for the sake of Olympus, even Narcissus has one and he wasn’t even immortal,” she stomped her foot as she spoke of the self-absorbed boy who fell in love with his own reflection. 


“Okay, would you like me to create a flower for you?” Juno said calmly, offering a solution to the distraught teenager’s problem.


“No. That’s not how this works.  That’s not how any of this works,” Juniper flopped into a seat, crossed her arms, and pouted. “I’m just going to go for a walk and think about this.”


Juniper left Olympus and went down to Earth to walk in the forest.  She walked on a narrow trail taking notice of all the wildflowers. She walked past some iris and wanted to tear them out of the ground. Those purple flowers with their long stems, large downward-facing petals, and the smaller center petals looking like a noblewoman ready for a fancy party mocking the barefooted girl in her pale pink gown. But she didn’t, and she even straightened one of the plants that looked like it was ready to break.  She walked past a rose bush, created for Venus’s son. It was said the rose turned red when Venus ran through the thorns pricking her ankle. Her blood turned the white roses red.  Juniper admired the flower’s beauty.  


She continued her walk feeling a twinge of anger as she came to a field of narcissus. The yellow flowers had flourished in the forest. A group of nymphs were caring for the flowers, helping them thrive and grow. Suddenly, a Hunter appeared aiming his arrow at a large hare near the narcissus. He let loose the arrow but it missed the hare and instead found the nymph Chloris.  Juniper, without a thought, ran to the nymph and removed the arrow from her side. The Hunter, seeing what he had done and knowing it would anger the gods, fled the forest.


Juniper held the spot where the arrow had pierced Chloris and healed the nymph’s wound. Some of Chloris’s blood pooled on a small patch of ground near the narcissus field. Chloris, so grateful for what Juniper had done, plucked a golden hair from her head and one from Juniper’s head. She dipped them into the blood and created a juniper tree. To this day, although this evergreen tree does not flower, the blue-purple berries of the juniper tree have healing properties.


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