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Bright red cup-shaped flowers grew in the lowlands of Holand, stiff stalks rising up straight and proud from mud and grass and shallow flooded fields. Stubborn they were, ranked like unruly guards, some in tidy rows, others clumped or scattered. They came in other colors than red — gold, purple, orange, white, pale and streaky green — but it was the red ones that heralded the equinox and the festival of Spring. In the north they would grow in carefully tended pots or sheltered gardens, blooming later than in the south. Navis missed the bright fields, he did not miss the strife.