Mira of the Shallow Pool

Mira of the Shallow Pool is a mortal girl of only eleven summers, a Daoine child with a quiet spirit and a heart drawn toward lonely places. Her village called her shy, but it was more than that—Mira listened to things others could not hear. The hush between raindrops. The whisper of wind in moss. The slow breath of the trees. One evening, she wandered deeper into the woods than she ever had before, cradling a bruised heart and seeking solitude. There, in a shaded glade, she found a shallow pool reflecting the overcast sky. She curled beside it and fell asleep, her cheek on damp stone and her dreams thick with longing.   When she awoke, the world had changed. The pool was no longer small—it stretched out like a still, silver mirror across an endless wood. A cool mist clung to the trees, curling around her fingers like shy companions. She had crossed into Tarnethil, the veiled domain of the Court of Mist and Petrichor. There, reality softened at the edges. Shadows drifted like smoke. Shapes were hints more than forms. And Mira, mortal though she was, did not weep or panic. She simply stood, barefoot and damp, and breathed. The forest breathed back.   As the dew touched her skin, something ancient stirred within her—magic, coiled like rainclouds behind her ribs. A sorcerous gift that had slumbered in her blood now bloomed, awakened by the magic of the feywild and the veil between worlds. The mist obeyed her instinctively. Her words called fog to her side. Her heartbeat made petals quiver. Even the Shroud of Unnerving Mist, the silent ArchFey who rules Tarnethil, took notice—not with words, but with presence, like the sudden stillness before rain. Mira had arrived as a lost child. Now, she was something more.   She wanders the mists of Tarnethil still, a mortal shaped by fey breath. She speaks little, but her eyes gleam with soft resolve. When she moves, the air cools and freshens, the scent of wet stone and ghostflower trailing behind. Fey beings call her Mistling or the Mortal Bloom, but she is always Mira of the Shallow Pool—the girl who slept beside a pond and woke with a storm in her soul.