Lady Serelien of the Mist

Before there were laws of the forest, there was a voice like wind in cedar-hollows. They called it Elder Mossbeard, and only later realized the voice belonged to a walking tree who had chosen to shape himself into a person so mortals would not be afraid. Bark-ridged and lanterned with fireflies, Mossbeard did not command Galdrowen so much as listen to it. When he spoke, the leylines slowed—as if the world itself were pausing to hear what the forest had decided.

Origins.
In the first age, when druids were only learners with dirt under their nails, Mossbeard gathered them beneath a newborn council-tree and named their wonder the Verdant Circle. He taught that oaths should be planted, not penned: press your palm to root and let the wood take your promise; if you lie later, the bark will itch until you return to make it right. He brokered the first cautious meeting with Vineheart of Duskfall in the neutral Swale Glade, offering water and silence before words. No alliance came of it, but a path was worn between glade and mire that would matter in darker years. When the Withering Skies dimmed magic and even the sleeping Grove-Wyrms drew slower breath, Mossbeard set his hands against a ley-stone and hummed the forest awake. “We are small only when we forget each other,” he told the frightened apprentices, and the stone warmed beneath their fingers.

Ascendance.
Years became rings. The Circle grew from campfire to council. Archdruid Fen Mossbark took day-to-day burden, but elders still made the long walk to the Elder’s grove for counsel. Mossbeard favored practical wisdom: let borders be made of living things, not lines on maps; keep a ledger of gifts and griefs; teach wardens to heal with the same plants they use to poison. He blessed Kara Windshade’s thorn-venom studies with a hard question—“How will this heal more than it harms?”—and waited until she had an answer before granting his moss-woven sigil. When Skyreach’s Luminari sought sap-maps of ley-currents, he traded them root-lore for star-charts and made them promise (hand to living bark) that no isle’s shadow would darken the heart-groves. “Promises,” he liked to say, “are fences around the future.”

Fracture.
Then the fences broke. The Shattering tore leylines like wet cloth, and parts of Galdrowen stuttered out of season. Thornspine packs turned sharp-nerved, and Duskfall’s vines probed along the broken edges. Mossbeard stood where the forest bled. He sent Rootcaller Brannok to gather feral broods, dispatched spirits to confuse Bloom scouts, and bent his own vast roots down into the fissures to braid them shut. The work cost him. Sap ran like amber tears; his voice turned slow with effort. On a day of ash-wind he pressed his palm to the council-tree, whispered a last instruction—“If I sleep, remember the song”—and grew still. Some say he entered a great dreaming to hold the wounds closed from within. Others say he became the unseen ring that steadies Thornhall Grove.

Twilight.
In the long, wary years that followed, few claimed to see him. And yet: during the fiercest border skirmishes with the Mire, quilts of shed Thornspine quills sometimes sang in a tone no throat could make, and the Circle’s young reported dreams of an elder whose beard shed fireflies as he pointed them toward the least bloody path. The Elderwood Guardian kept the Circle standing; Mossbeard’s memory kept it kind. Thalia Fernstep—born restless—said she felt a patient weight on her shoulder whenever fear tried to turn curiosity into cruelty.

Echoes.
With the world mending and Elarin Wildbloom calling Galdrowen to open its paths again, the old hum returned to the groves. Young Grove-Wyrms hatched with calm, and the resin quilts thrummed in a gentler key. On a spring morning, apprentices found a new ring on the council-tree—fresh wood grown overnight, etched with three lines in living script:

1. Keep oaths where roots can hear them.
2. Heal as far as you defend.
3. Seek accord before victory.

No hand had carved those words. When Elarin pressed his palm to the bark, the fireflies rose in a drifting beard-shape and settled like blessings on every brow. Whether the Elder had woken, or simply learned a slower way to speak, none could say. The lesson was the same as it had been at the beginning: the forest endures together.

Thus endures Elder Mossbeard—Founder, First Speaker, and patient conscience of the Verdant Circle. Not a hero of battles, but of continuance. When the wind moves through Thornhall and smells of rain and old cedar, Galdrowen’s children say, “Grandfather is walking,” and they straighten their backs, because they know the trees are listening.