The Greenwood is young tonight—its roots still whispering in the language of sap and rain. The halls I have carved from its heart are simple yet proud, built not for grandeur but endurance: timber pillars wrapped in vines, birchwood doors bound by silver filigree, the scent of fresh resin thick in the air. Lanterns of amber glass sway from the beams, their light trembling across the polished floors like dawn breaking through mist.

Beyond the terrace, the forest breathes. The canopy swells in every direction—an emerald sea veiled in fog, its edges blurring where the river winds between the trunks. The river is the Greenwood’s pulse, swift and bright, singing to the Silverduin that winds beyond my borders. I chose this land for its promise, for the old song that hummed beneath its soil… though perhaps I lie even to myself. Perhaps it was her realm’s light across the valley that drew me here.

And now she stands before me, the very spirit of that light made flesh.

The Lady of Taur Im Duinath enters not as a guest, but as though the forest itself parts for her passing. Her gown is woven from silvery birch silk, patterned faintly with thread the color of moonlit moss. At her throat glimmers a circlet of living birchwood—white, supple, and still adorned with a single unfurling leaf. Her hair, pale as mist over the river, spills down her back in loose waves bound here and there by small pearls, each one gleaming like trapped starlight. When she moves, light seems to follow; when she pauses, even the air holds its breath.

I have seen queens, and I have seen goddesses carved from marble and praise, but none who carried both the fragility of dawn and the weight of twilight in their bearing.

My courtiers draw back as she approaches. I should speak first, yet I linger a heartbeat too long, watching the reflection of lanternlight shift across her eyes—grey-green like the river just before rain.

At last I step forward, voice steady though something in me strains beneath it. “Lady of the Living Rivers,” I say, my tone measured, formal, yet edged with something unbidden. “Greenwood is honored by your presence. Our realms are bound now by more than border—your Silverduin and my Forest River drink from the same veins of the earth. Perhaps the Valar have woven our roots to strengthen what was once sundered.”

Her gaze lifts to mine, calm and knowing, and for an instant the murmurs of the hall vanish. The flicker of lanterns, the rustle of leaves, even the song of the river—all of it fades to stillness.

In that silence, I feel the forest’s will around us: two sovereigns standing at the edge of their making, the echo of the world’s first dawn between them.

If the Valar are kind, they will make me forget the reason I chose these woods. If not—then I will spend my reign pretending it was not her.