8th Light beneath the eleventh Moon

3761 Cycles beyond the Dark

722 Years after the Repentance

Entry: 1/025

Dear self,

I feel that it is difficult to thoroughly explain things to someone who does not know them if you yourself take them for granted. Reflecting back there are a lot of things in our journal already that I mention without explaining! I haven’t even gone into what Anamnesis is despite how important it is.

You do not know this yet, myself who lacks the context of our life, but the first day of the week is special, and the second such day of the month is even more so. It’s a day for rituals and ceremonies. It’s the day we go to meet Aunt Ekelyn!

The event with the Quislings happened between such visits, so there was little chance for her to notice anything amiss and we have elected not to inform her. While we call her Aunt, she is actually Mother’s adoptive guardian and she raised Mum after she was abandoned by the gnomes for being a changeling. Ekelyn holds demesne over most of the neighbouring forest and enough lands surrounding it to include our town of Tintinnabulis. Her aura has a large influence over the magic in the region and can even encourage and discourage certain behaviours or individuals. Children are generally more loved and protected around here by everyone and the native spirits are aligned enough with Ekelyn that they will enforce her protections over children here, even against their normally mischievous tendencies.

Ekelyn runs an orphanage of course, so we all prepared gifts for her wards. We mostly make toys for them but a few of them have been demanding that I make them candies instead, which ends up being more work for me with how many of them there are and how impermanent treats are between children.

Ekelyn is a mature Hamadryad bonded to a large oak. Hamadryads are different from normal dryads in that they bond to one tree specifically and become permanently tethered by that tree after they mature, so Ekelyn cannot travel much farther than the grounds the orphanage was built upon and she is vulnerable to any harm towards her tree. The old oak has a bole thick enough to build a house into and its branches make it taller than some of the towers at the Mysterium. It’s always decorated on ribbons and the kids climb all over it if someone doesn’t visit Ekelyn to chase them off every once in a while.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Tori kept pestering our aunt with his new puzzle toy and five other boys and a few girls crowded round as he demonstrated how it twisted and changed bizarrely right in front of your eyes.

We had to have a serious discussion about the rift opening. We only let Anora in with the meeting because of how capable she is despite her age. She’s already stronger than Vaeril and he used to be the strongest child in magic between us all. Aunt Ekelyn couldn’t tell us anything about where it was but she could tell us about the Asuras who fought each other when it was formed. She says she thinks it formed before they started fighting here which could mean its creation sparked their fight or they jumped through it to reach here from their fight at a separate location. She can also tell us that the weaker of the two, who was aligned with an Aspect of Fortuity, was defeated in the end and the victor disappeared from all trace right after their skirmish ended.

When dusk came we marched through the snow with the lot of the children and gathered around Ekelyn’s tree. Being close to Ekelyn is the most comfortable place to be in any weather so winter wasn’t a danger around the orphanage. Everyone took out instruments and played music while Ekelyn sang a haunting winter melody that spread into the forest. Icy sprites and wind fairies gathered and danced around and over our heads. There were multiples more invisible pixies with various Aspects dancing around the other fairies and making motes of ice and flakes of snow swirl around. The frozen trees rang with a tinkling like glass.

An ethereal shape leaped by the forest edge and landed transforming into a white wolf with frosted breath. It approached our Aunt and laid a wreath of roses formed from ice by her feet. It turned around returning to the forest and all the fairies dispersed instantly. Ekelyn holds a lot of respect from the spirits and she regularly maintains relations with them. The town only settled here because of Ekelyn because it’s actually slightly further from the main King’s Road than most of the town build themselves near the highway.

As for me I had to sit this one out. It turned out that an Incuria grew out of that dispelling charm the poacher had thrown at me and now I have a little issue with disrupting magical workings. It might end up being permanent but it won’t be too hard to inure myself to it and turn it i to something beneficial if I control how it manifests. I did it for Pony Kid, so I can do it for myself.

Hope we fare well.

Regards,

Me.

~*M*~