In his thirty years, he had yet to walk through the gate without pausing in awe to look up at all his people had accomplished. He believed that even in his three-hundredth year, the same feelings of coming home would persist. Perhaps becoming a voice of the land would not be disagreeable with him, if it meant he could stay here in this place and stare up at the lighted canopy until the end of time.
“Serenthel, vastha lythel!” a young voice called out.
Serenthel smiled across the clearing as a boy weaved in and out of passing groups with the energy and boundless emotion that would be tempered in his later years. A few of the elders raised their eyebrows in the boy’s direction, and one or two called out for him to slow his pacing, but most joined Serenthel in his smiling at the reminders of what had been left behind after the rights of Hyn. The boy skidded to a stop in front of Forfolyn and set a palm against the stag’s nose in greeting.
“Hail, Efferthas,” Serenthel greeted with a raised hand and restrained levity befitting one of his age. “You come as a spring rabbit newly awakened from the burrow, though less quietly so.”
Efferthas flushed and ducked his head. “I mean no disturbance, brother, but I have been sent to find your arrival. Mother knows of your return and has requested your presence.”
The hairs at the back of Serenthel’s neck raised. Mother must know of the dream, he thought, and was not entirely surprised by the news. Pride had him wanting to share this rare happening with Efferthas, but forethought held his tongue. Dismounting, he handed Forfolyn’s loosely harnessed reins to the boy, who in truth was only four years Serenthel’s junior.
“Please see to Forfolyn,” Serenthel requested. “And see that a scout is sent to the bitterroot thicket just west of Swallows Bend. I believe a doe has met an unfortunate end, and I wish the body be brought to the druids for examination lest it be some sickness that may spread to the others.”
“Best to be assured,” Efferthas agreed, his solemn tone more in keeping with a youth only a few swiftly passing years away from his Hyn. “I will see it is done. You should hurry. Mother seemed... troubled.”
Serenthel set a reassuring hand on Efferthas’s shoulder. “Worry not, brother. All will be well.” He set off across the open market area beneath the canopy, not quite as assured by his own words as he’d like to have been.
He passed by a group of weavers huddled around one loom, the elders passing on their knowledge to the younglings with care and patience. After a hundred years of practice, they would still be considered apprentices. Only a few would ever truly reach the expertise required to be called a meis’wyd, or Loom Master. The Lwyn’fam currently had only two, one a few years from his time of choosing, and another a quarter century behind. The younger weavers watched their elder’s hands move over the loom with rapt attention, in their eyes a hope that their hands would one day would hold as much skill.
Such was the way of the Elvan; an extended youth leading into a century of training and perfecting a chosen profession. Be they weaver or druid or bowyer, each had a skill to be nourished, cherished and shared. Efferthas had already chosen to become a watcher, his love for the elk and exploration setting him on a path towards a Hyn that would allow some freedom to keep his seemingly boundless energy and untempered spirit as he watched over the migrating herds both near and far from the grove. Serenthel, too, once considered the path of the watcher, but in the end, the Mother helped him to see that his was a similar yet vastly different calling. Perhaps then, as now, she had already foreseen the dream that was to come.
He thought over the dream as he walked across the clearing, pausing only to take a piece of flatbread offered freely by a hearthkeeper. “Thank you, sister.”
Unlike the wealth driven economies of man, his appreciative smile was all the payment required for the bread she’d spent the morning making. Her bread was shared to all, and all would in turn share the products of their chosen paths with her. It was hard for him to understand how a society could properly function any other way, with the needs of some being pushed aside for the want of few circles of pressed metal with the face of a crowned man stamped on it. It seemed a strange thing indeed to labor for coins you could not eat only to exchange them for something you could.
The bread’s warm flavors were a welcome distraction from the lingering dream. He thought instead of the talent required to mingle such herbs and get the dough just right to form a soft texture inside a hard crust. He thought of the beautiful blankets and fabrics the weavers created, of the artfully carved longbows that could shoot across a hundred yards without effort, of the music he could hear pleasantly playing along with the breeze dancing in the leaves, of his home; a home he knew he would soon be leaving.
By the time his feet had taken him to the Mother’s Tree, he had finished the bread but felt no less apprehensive. If anything, it had reminded him of all he would soon be called upon to leave behind. He hadn’t known it would come in the form of a dream, but he had known since the day he accepted his path, that a traveler was not destined to remain long in the place of his birth.
“Vastha lythel, Serenthel,” one of the Mother’s attendants warmly greeted. She had hand painted beads woven into
