42.2 Song-Bound

General Summary

Day 674

The river is busy and humming with excitement about the increase in magical energy. The banks of the river are blooming with plant life that's clearly out of season (it is autumn!) and leaves that have reversed their growth pattern and are pushing out new leaves. There is something deeply quiet and satisfying about knowing that we caused this, and no one knows. We can see the excitement without any of the obligation of people knowing that we are responsible.   As we travel, we come across a small cove at the top of a cliff, with a single massive Grove sprouting from it. It's...a Tree of Day and Night and Liliales and I immediately take off towards it before Qing Chen calls us back.  

Where are you going?!

  Qing Chen, evidently, doesn't see the Tree, though Qishali does. Naturally, we call Magdalena out to look. Apparently there used to be a Grove that reached the river and whose roots drew from the water, but it wasn't Day and Night and it wasn't here...  

What do you see?

  Inspecting it again and letting my heart settle - it's a little odd...but it is very real. It's the biggest Grove Tree I've ever seen and of course I want to fly towards it...which makes it seem like a trap. Liliales agrees that he feels drawn to it in a way that even the trees at home don't call to him. It resonates with his Phantom Dream Spike brooch and that tells him that the magic is real, but the physicality of it is not. The magic is genuinely Day and Night.   Magdalena tells us that she sees something ancient and veiled there, and hostile to her. It's like a ward defending it against her, or things like her. It could be her, specifically, or Treeborn, or some Treeborn, or something else about her entirely.   When I send out my own thread of magic, I feel it as warm, inviting, and delicate. When Liliales tries, he'd drawn right off the ship towards it - it's enticing. Qishali feels safety from it, but she's drawn towards the cave at the bottom rather than the Tree at the top.   The four of us who can see it and approach (including Ausha) will investigate, leaving everyone else behind. Qishali is outnumbered, and so we make our way to the Tree rather than the cave. Up close, it really does feel like a projection of a Tree that is somewhere else...we can hear the songs and feel the magic but physically, the Tree simply isn't there. But what magic does connect it to its origin leads us deeper into the cliff, closer the the cave that pulls Qishali in.   A gentle luminescence lights up the cave as we walk deeper, like the twilight hours of dawn and dusk. The barriers we encounter are invisible and harmless, but they are so subtle that we don't even notice until we are past them...and the magic is so powerful that by the fourth barrier, I wonder if even the Empress would be able to survive an encounter with it.   And eventually, it opens into a vast chamber that does, indeed, contain a massive Tree of Day and Night in its physical reality. The rest of the cavern is speckled with smaller trees that aren't quite Grove trees or Eldritch trees but seem like individual manifestations of each of our cycle: Dawn, Day, Dusk, Night.   And what's more: There is a village. With people. But not...fae of day and night - they're spirits.   We make our approach, slowly, and cross paths with a butterfly with nightlike wings. After a moment, he transforms into a person to greet us: Robes like the night sky and starry eyes that remind me of Thalien. He greets Qishali first, taking both of her hands and introducing himself as Asterus.  

Welcome. You're safe here - this is a place of refuge.

  When I ask about fae and the Tree, he says he can take us to the Lord Guardian if we seek answers about "the slumbering ones". Passing through the village, there are all sorts of spirits of varying ages - many butterflies, but others as well. The settlement seems to be made of wood from the strange day-night trees, but none are made of Grove wood.   The building Asterus leads us to has both a guard and a secretary-like lightning mouse who buzzes nervously before bringing us to the Lord Guardian himself. He is a hulking, stonelike being who towers over all of us.  

It has been a long time since any waking fae has come. My name is Alruun.

  Alruun seems intent on assuring Qishali of her safety, before turning to us and telling us about the tree. He is the third Lord Guardian of this place, and recalls that his predecessors have described a fae who brought the spirits here to life in safety until things change. Apparently only certain people can even see this place, and only certain kinds of fae are able to visit. The fae who welcomed them here, and others, continue to sleep in the roots and branches of the Tree. Only one fae can be woken, he tells us. It seems that he has historical records of many groves and fae, but has never welcomed a fae guest himself.   When we approach the Tree, there are indeed dozens of sleeping fae of day and night in the roots. Their sleep feels normal, like they're peacefully cycling and simply haven't woken yet. The place he leads us is a small cottage formed by the Tree, with magical barriers around it again. Alruun can't approach, but the three of us pass easily.   Inside the cottage is a quaint, perfectly normal living room and kitchen. The napping fae (on the couch, no less, not even the bed), is...clearly Treeborn. His magical aura is so clearly like Magdalena. He has sun-warmed golden hair pulled through a gleaming crown. One wing each is dawn and dusk, and his extremities fade into midnight. As soon as he hears our footsteps, he rises to greet us.   His aura is...incredible. Liliales kneels reflexively, though I resist. I settle into preparing tea for us to share, and we all sit in silence until it is ready.   Cereus, the Endless - very clearly our Treeborn. And he tells us that he has left this place only a few times since the Pruning, and is, of course, surprised to see new fae of day and night about. I want to tell him everything, but Magdalena being barred from entering this place stills my eagerness. I leave it simply that 'someone' created a new grove. Not the Heart of Song...unfortunately.   I'm hesitant to tell him everything he wants to know - which fae cycles survived, which groves remain. It is hard to trust so instantly, even though his aura nearly overwhelms me. But as I poke at which Treeborn might be allowed, my walls come down. He misses Jaedien - his closest kin. Telling him is almost as good as telling Magdalena. I get to watch his face as I tell him that she's alive, she's in her Grove, and she's rebuilding it.

• The Tree here is the first one Cereus planted. He wasn't present when our Grove was destroyed but his affinity with time has let him 'rewind' this one tree and preserve everyone who was sleeping under it. Then he could transport it here in safety, and bring it back to its present state. There are not enough fae here to cycle naturally without dying out, so they have all been held in stasis until it is safe to wake again.
• A wandering spirit made it past the barriers at one point, and that is one of the times that he left the cavern. He brought back spirits to stay here in safety, and only those who pass the 'trials' can leave. This, it seems, is his means of making sure that spirits who leave will be safe, and I'm heartened to hear that each Lord Guardian has been given a way to wake Cereus and remove the barriers to free them if they so choose.
• The 'affinity for time' is something unique to Cereus not because he is a Treeborn, but because he studied under someone called 'Eternum'. 'Time itself', Cereus describes him. At this, I tell him about Magdalena and he remarks that he has met Magdalena's teacher as well. Kaie and Eternum, evidently, are generally friendly.
• He describes me as an adept, for I've moved beyond the strict categories of wizard, mystic, and ritualist.
• Liliales and I, he says, are 'song-bound'. Of course there is a word for this relationship now that we've found the history of our people. Cereus tells us that song-bound fae will continue to deepen their relationship with each sleep, and pick up more songs that fuel the relationship. We all have a small laugh over Jaeril, and our own song-bound relationship in relation to my wing-mother, Magdalena, and treeborn, Cereus. 
• The individual cycle trees, he tells us, are planted from just the magic of that cycle. The dusk trees, he shows us, are like the deepest shade I've felt. It blends beautifully with my dusk magic. The trees themselves are gifts, meant to be used in a variety of ways to support the people who live here. They are not sacred, like Grove trees, nor living spirits like Eldritch trees, but their magic does produce spirits such as the butterflies we've seen. When I tell him that our own Grove doesn't have a boundary forest, he makes a gift of 100 tiny saplings to bring back home, encapsulated in a time-frozen box with a bottle of water imbued with time magic.

When it's time for the fae of Day and Night to wake and travel North, Cereus wonders if this massive Tree should be moved North as well. It contains ancient songs, and many of them are of the Pruning. It may be better for such songs to be forbidden.   But these are questions that span a long time, and we don't have to answer it yet. It may still be many years before Cereus feels that it's right to wake the fae who remember the last days of the Pruning.   The Treeborn of the fae of seasons is presumed dead, though she was someone who was a close sibling of both Cereus and Jaeril. She was ambitious in spreading her children far and wide, and some blame her for taking up so much space with her prolific kind. In the Pruning, he says she was one of the first to fall.  

It's hard to miss her.

  But it is hard to hold onto any negative feelings after so long. At this, we turn to leave the cavern so that he can greet Magdalena, even if she still can't enter the cave.