BLOOM · the Garden · Bloom

CORAL

The Sweetheart

Everyone roots for Coral. Coral finishes sixth.

The shard

The Garden shard that kept the warm part — not the flower, the afternoon. Coral came out of the break with no advantage of any kind and has been the most popular marble in the championship since round one.

Sixth is fine. Sixth is genuinely fine.
CORAL

How Coral races

Coral has no power. Not a small one, not a subtle one: none. Every place Coral takes is taken on ordinary speed against marbles that are being helped, which is why Coral's occasional wins are the loudest results the championship produces and why they are rare.

The signature

Everyone Roots

The camera drifts toward Coral. The leaderboard keeps a light on Coral. The music swells for every place Coral gains. None of it makes Coral faster.

What it costs

None, because there is no advantage to pay for. This is the entry, and it is checked every season: if Coral's results ever move, something has leaked, and the character has failed.

The tell

The blush, the largest eyes on the grid — and the one that matters: on the winner's finish frame, whoever won, Coral's face is happy.

Feeds on

Nothing in particular. The power is on everywhere, or it is on nowhere.

Comes apart in

Nothing on the track is specifically bad for this one.

The voice

Hear Coral

A warm "aww-woo" that opens as it goes, with the gentlest onset here — it arrives rather than starting.

In the race mix — A5, 880 Hz, The cluster

Two notes a whole step apart, the softest onset on the roster. It plays on every place Coral gains and on nothing else.

The record

22ndChampionship

3Points

1Starts

0Wins

0Podiums

5thBest

5.0Average

5thLast out

R02 5th of 6 clean win

In the stands

The whole point. The affection is manufactured entirely out of camera, face and sound, and it is real anyway.

Rivalries

CORAL

The Garden Split

Teammates. Completely opposed readings of the same doctrine.

Not yet met on a grid

ROSE

Bloom's doctrine is amplitude — more of whatever is already happening. Rose takes that as a mandate: bounce harder, take the wild line, finish first or finish nineteenth. Coral, who has no advantage at all, takes it as a matter of warmth. The team's two most popular marbles disagree about what the team is for.

Rose beats Coral more often, by a distance, and gets a fraction of the noise for it.