A slim volume bound in pale green leather that seems to shimmer faintly in certain lights. The pages smell of spring flowers.
A TRAVELER’S MEDITATION
I have walked through the courts of kings and the temples of gods. I have seen the forges of the Ember Halls blazing with primordial fire, and the libraries of the Marble Academy stretching beyond sight. I have gazed upon wonders that would fill lesser books from cover to cover.
Nothing prepared me for the Elfwood.
The forest begins suddenly—one moment you are walking through ordinary trees, and the next you are somewhere else entirely. The air changes. The light changes. Even time seems to change, though perhaps that is merely the mind’s response to overwhelming beauty.
The silverwood trees rise like living spires, their trunks pale as moonlight and their leaves shimmering with hues of gold and emerald that do not fade with seasons. In the Elfwood, there are no seasons. Not as we understand them. The forest exists in a state of eternal spring, where flowers bloom that bloomed a thousand years ago, and the same streams have sung the same songs since before humans learned to write.
I asked my elven guide how this was possible. She smiled and said only: “The forest remembers what it wishes to be.”
At the heart of Vel Enweir—the most radiant region of the Elfwood, domain of Queen Aelra Sylanthiel—lies Balandel, the capital. But “capital” seems too harsh a word for what I saw. Balandel is not built among the trees; it is woven into them. Halls suspended in branches. Walkways of pale wood connecting ancient silverwoods. Singing vines that provide music which changes with the time of day. Moonlit pools that reflect not the sky, but visions I could not understand and have tried not to remember.
The elves who dwell there move with grace that makes human movement seem like stumbling. They speak softly, dress in garments that seem grown rather than sewn, and regard visitors with polite curiosity—the way one might regard an interesting beetle that has wandered into view. They are not cruel. They are simply… ancient. Their perspective spans millennia. Our entire lives, to them, pass in the blink of an eye.
I stayed three days in Balandel, which I later learned was three weeks in the outside world. Time flows differently there. Or perhaps it flows correctly there, and everywhere else is the distortion.
The elves spoke of their Queen with reverence that bordered on worship. Four thousand years she has ruled Vel Enweir. Four thousand years she has preserved her realm against threats I can barely imagine. When I asked if I might glimpse her, my guide laughed—not unkindly—and said that the Queen does not receive visitors who have not been summoned.
I did not press the matter.
The Three Great Groves were mentioned but not shown to me: Myrlen’Thal, the Grove of Morning, always bathed in golden light; Shael’Nareth, the Grove of Twilight, where the boundary between worlds grows thin; and Telor’Augus, the Grove of Fire, where pilgrims meditate beside crystalline pools. These are sacred places, I was told. Not for casual tourism.
When I finally left the Elfwood, walking back through that invisible boundary into ordinary forest, I wept. Not from sadness, exactly. From the sudden poverty of the world I was returning to. Colors seemed duller. Sounds seemed harsher. Even the air felt thicker, heavier, more tired.
I write this account because others should know what exists beyond the forest’s edge. Not to encourage tourism—the elves have little patience for that—but to remind us that beauty endures in this world. That some things remain untouched by the wars and corruptions that plague our mortal realms.
The Elfwood remembers what it wishes to be.
May we all find such certainty.
—From the journals of Aldric Fernwander, human traveler, Year 1198