“Thank you, Lissan.” Serenthel passed under a shaped bower of wild purple wisteria branches and entered the garden. A sense of serenity permeated the air, along with the scents of flowers forever in bloom be it the height of spring or the depths of winter. The Mother’s garden was a place set a part from the outside world, yet fully connected to it in ways Serenthel knew he could never truly understand.
Well-tended flower beds and neatly stoned paths flowed in and out from more chaotic sections that had been left to grow as nature intended. Dark spaces of shade untouched by light juxtaposed bright and airy plots where tulips grew in organized rows of varying colors. Water trickled into a pond topped by lilies and alive with golden scaled fish. Hummingbirds and butterflies and bees flitted from flower to flower, forever dancing within a paradise of unending abundance. Centering it all stood a tree, its light pink flowers forever in bloom despite ripe fruit and silver leaves always hanging from its branches. Its height remained short and its canopy’s shadow never growing beyond the small sloping hill on which it had rooted. The hill gave the most splendid view of the garden, and on it, under her tree, sat the Mother.
Although, she didn’t exactly sit. Like the tree at her back, the bottom of her legs had become wooden, rooted into the earth and connected with it. Unmovable, and forever looking out onto her eternal garden. The price of immortality, they said. At her Hynna’durai, she had chosen to become a voice of the forest for the Lwyn’fam. The price, her mobility and part of who she had been, served as fertile soil for a seed to grow. From this seed, she had gained sight beyond where she sat rooted, and knowledge older than the trees.
Despite such wondrous gifts, Serenthel was uncertain he would find such a price agreeable. His legs always craved movement, his eyes always seeking something new to see. That he had been named the Lwyn’fam’s first traveler in over a hundred years came as little surprise to those who knew his heart best. The previous traveler had not yet returned, so it fell to the community to become his guide. It seemed everyone in the grove had something to teach him, some small or large piece of advice to share.
Be mindful of your surroundings. Always pack for longer than you expect. This plant is edible, but this one will kill you. Represent our people with dignity, compassion and grace. Humans rarely say what they mean. Do not go into the Grey Marsh. Come back to us.
Observe, learn, but do not interfere. Humans can be dangerous. Come back to us.
Shadows can exist in the most radiant of lights. Do not be tempted by the dreaming.
Come back to us.
With those words whispering across strands of anxious tension, he reverently approached the grove’s first traveler. She had seen the far reaches of the world, observed and learned and brought stories back to her people. She had come back home in her one-hundredth and eighty-seventh year and chose to never leave it again. Would his eyes show him the same fate, he wondered? Would seeing the world lead him to desire such an ending for his journey?
“Ah, the traveler has come.” The Mother’s greeting rang clear over the garden, almost as birdsong more than a woman’s voice.
Her white, colorless eyes looked up as Serenthel’s shadow joined the speckled shadow of her flowering tree. Long tresses of equally white hair hung in straight lines from her head and pooled around her in puddles of moonlight. Woven between the strands, vines grew and flowers blossomed, their roots clinging to her body and seeping into her milky skin. Her smile was ethereal, and it brought unmeasured joy to his heart.
“Mother,” he said softly and lowered to one knee before her. “I come as summoned, and in search of your guidance.”
“You have dreamed,” she said, the words reverberating into his very soul and carrying with them a weight that foretold his future. “And you now feel the pull of the unseen world upon your spirit.”
“Yes, Mother.” That she understood did not surprise him, but it also did not put him any more at ease. “It both excites and frightens me.”
“As it should, traveler.” She smiled at him and touched a spot on the grass beside her.
He gratefully accepted her invitation and sat next to her, his knees pulled up to his chest in a manner not in keeping with one who had passed his Hyn but more so bearing of the youth he’d been meant to leave behind. There were no elders to judge him in this garden, however, so he forwent the more dignified posture of sitting with his legs tucked under him and knees to the ground. The Mother was more than an elder; she was, well, the Mother, and in her presence he felt but a child.
“Did you know?” he first asked the question most weighing on his mind. “When you said I should be the one to investigate the doe, did you know I was to have a dream today?”
“No,” she replied, her smile wistful. “I knew only that the winds have changed, and in them I felt your own time of change drawing near. That it would come as a dream is not entirely unexpected, though the nature of it is...disquieting.”
To hear that even the Mother had been troubled by the dream’s darkness made Serenthel hug his knees more tightly. “It was not a pleasant experience. Is it always like that, to dream?”
“There was a time,” she said and cast her gaze out over her
