from Zariste’s Concise Guide to World Religions

The Goddess laurel is a small, evergreen shrub that grows across the lands in Damensea where the Goddess’s followers live. However, only priests pay much attention to the plant because the Goddess laurel only blooms and bears fruit on grounds consecrated to the Goddess, like her temples. On these holy grounds, Goddess laurel will bloom after three years and start bearing fruit three months later. Unlike other temperate plants, it blossoms and bears fruit at the same time, and it does so all year until a year or two before the plant dies. Goddess laurels live around fifty years.

Goddess laurel leaves are glossy, leathery, and dark green. The flowers are large and showy with white, velvety petals, and the small apple-like fruit have deep red with skin and tender, white flesh. The flowers and crushed leaves smell like cinnaspice and apples, while the bestowed fruit taste like sweet, juicy cinnaspiced apples.

Goddess laurel apples are only eaten when they naturally fall, and they often roll to the person intended to eat them (i.e. bestowed to the person by the Goddess.) Few other than priests eat the Goddess laurel apples, and they always eat them raw. If the apples are picked or stolen, they taste bitter and make the eater vomit.

Every temple has at least one Goddess laurel. They propagate seedlings in their gardens every ten years. Once the seedlings are fully established, they are moved to pots kept in the temple’s sun chapel (or beside the eastern-facing window near the altar in smaller temples.)

Priests use the Goddess laurel to summon the presence of the Goddess when they need her direct advice, like during ordination examinations. Kneeling beside the Goddess laurel, the priests speak the Goddess’s true name then beg her to favor them with her presence. When the Goddess’s presence joins them, the Goddess laurel’s leaves rustle, and its fragrance floods the room. Sometimes she does nothing more to communicate, although she has been known to bestow her apples or even speak when summoned.