Cloud Millet

Cloud Millet grows on slender, upright stalks that reach from the knee to the hip of an adult, depending on how generous the season has been. The stems are a pale green that often takes on a faint silver sheen in strong light, with narrow leaves that angle outward and downward to shed mist and rain. Along the upper part of each stalk, the grain forms in loose, feathery heads that droop slightly under their own weight. When the crop nears maturity these heads turn from dull green to soft gold or off white, and in a hillside field they blur together into what looks like a low, drifting cloud clinging to the terraces. Each tiny grain is enclosed in a thin husk that dries to a pale straw color. The plant’s fine hairs and delicate structure make it ill suited to heavy winds or deep water, but very well adapted to catching the cool moisture and gentle breezes of Gavorah’s upper slopes.

Cloud Millet is primarily used as food, milled or cooked whole into light porridges, steamed cakes, and soft flatbreads that do not sit heavily in the stomach. Highland families favor it for breakfast and for meals before long climbs, and many messengers and caravan hands keep simple millet cakes as travel rations that stay palatable for days. During festivals on Gavorah it appears in sweeter form, folded into “cloud cakes” flavored with glassfruit syrup or citrus peel. The grain’s fine husks and chaff are collected and dried for use as stuffing in bedding and cushions, since they are both light and slow to mold in the cool air of the upper slopes. While Cloud Millet is not truly magical in itself, some scribes and hedge alchemists treat it as a sympathetic material for workings tied to air, height, or lightness. Ground flour is sometimes mixed into the pulp for certain parchments, especially those meant to bear wind or flight related spells, and a few local potions makers add a pinch of toasted grain to draughts that are meant to steady the breath, ease climbing, or fend off exhaustion. Its cultivation is limited by altitude and soil, and most Esharans are cautious about expanding fields too aggressively, knowing that stripped terraces on those heights are slow to heal and that the grain is better kept as a carefully tended gift of Gavorah than as a bulk export for foreign tables.