Chapter 647: Emotions

Ther’Abella turned in three slow circles with her palms empty and her eyes darting across the moss-slick terraces.

The sun beat down broad and clean through the upper branches, casting shadows that shifted with every breath of wind through Yggdrasil.

The canopy was alive, noisy, and full of moving bodies.

Down in the lower rings of the Sovereign Realm, wandering vagrants and provincial lords spoke of Yggdrasil as a monument, a solitary silent spire of petrified timber that simply bled raw vitality into the planetary soil.

They wrote hymns about a dead pillar of life.

To those who drew breath upon its vast ribs, the World Tree was an empire.

Entire stone-paved districts rested upon the primary boughs. Aqueducts fed by clear celestial springs cut through living wood without rotting it, cascading into ornamental cisterns where juvenile spirits dipped their heels.

The bark was thick and warm underfoot, and it vibrated with a low thrum like the pulse of an ancient sleeping sovereign.

Its people were hers, too.

The elves of Yggdrasil did not follow Lady Eluned the way subjects follow a queen... They worshipped her as every house, every guild, and every child who left a white lotus on the edge of a cistern belonged to her pantheon, a congregation of tens of thousands who had built their temples and their whole lives around the goddess who held up the sky above them.

"Ther’Abella!"

The shouting echoed from the tiered walkways above the courtyard.

"Ther’Abella, if Captain Kaelith catches you without your polearm on morning inspection, she’s going to make you scrub the resin vats until your fingernails turn amber!"

Ther’Abella winced, tossing her head so her long silver hair spilled over her shoulder.

She recognized the voice immediately... It was Evandra, who was likely pacing by the training yard with her hand already clamped to her scabbard.

The Viridian Guard was assembling for the third rotation of the watch.

They were the sworn protectors of the World Tree and Lady Eluned, eight elite elven maidens chosen from nine thousand applicants, tasked with guarding the sanctum day and night.

Any one of them could hold a bridge alone against a Tier 4 horde, and together they had never lost a drill, a duel, or a wager.

Ther’Abella was the youngest, and the only one still afraid of Captain Kaelith’s resin vats.

In truth, every woman in the squad knew the assignment was an honorable redundancy.

Lady Eluned did not need a guard... If Ther’Abella were forced to measure the Lady against every crowned sovereign, ancestral spirit, and high conqueror who walked the Sovereign Realm, Eluned stood above them all.

She had not crawled through the mud of mortal cultivation, no, the woman had been born from the former Tree Spirit, her mother, who had chosen to become ether itself, dissolving her own primordial essence into the air of the sanctum so that two daughters could be born from the vapor.

The instant Eluned drew her first breath within the heartwood hollow, the foundations of the world had cracked as she had stepped out of the womb as an ascended deity.

Because of that instantaneous, terrifying leap into godhood, there were things she had simply never touched.

The ordinary experiences of an elf, the clumsy adolescent years, the scraped knees, the slow gathering of mortal attachments, had been bypassed entirely.

She had begun at the peak, watching the world crawl beneath her canopy.

"Your weapon is here."

The voice was cool and carried no weight at all... It sounded like dry leaves drifting over polished stone.

Ther’Abella stopped in her tracks.

She had reached the arched entryway of the Grand Library, where thousands of leather-bound folios and bark-skin scrolls were nestled into the living grain of the hollow trunk.

Standing by a low cedar table was Lady Eluned.

The Spirit of the World Tree was breathtaking, though she was noticeably petite beside the towering wide-shouldered frame of her late mother.

What she lacked in height she made up for with an effortless sculpted perfection that seemed entirely at odds with the mortal world.

Her jade-tinted robes brushed against the moss on the flagstones and her emerald hair fell in loose fragrant waves down to her waist, crowned with white star-lotuses that never withered and never bloomed beyond half-parted petals.

It was nearly impossible to picture Lady Eluned with anyone.

She seemed genuinely oblivious to the posturing of the high elven lords who frequented the court, and she showed zero interest in the theatrics of romance...

Yet, as Ther’Abella looked at her, a small, quiet thought that had nagged at her for decades surfaced again.

’She acts so robotic sometimes.’

Was it because she couldn’t understand?

She had lived for over a thousand years upon the highest bough, and her reactions often lacked the natural messiness of living creatures.

Rustle!

A thin emerald vine uncoiled smoothly from the vaulted ceiling above, wrapped around the shaft of Ther’Abella’s silver polearm, and lowered it through the air with precision until the iron butt clicked against the floorboards.

"Thank you, Lady Eluned," Ther’Abella breathed, catching the haft with both hands.

As she stepped forward, Eluned tossed the text she had been holding onto the table.

The paper fell open, and Ther’Abella’s blue eyes instantly caught the gilded lettering across the cover.

[Guides to Romance: A Comprehensive Survey of Mortal Longing.]

Ther’Abella’s mouth opened slightly. She blinked.

"Guides to Romance?" she read aloud with her voice trembling slightly.

She snapped her gaze up to Eluned’s face.

Eluned stared back at her with a completely blank expression.

Her porcelain brow did not knit, her eyes did not narrow, and not a single muscle twitched around her mouth.

’Aren’t people supposed to act flustered when someone catches them reading something like that?’ Ther’Abella wondered with an awkward sweat breaking out beneath her silver bangs.

"Sit down," Eluned said flatly, pointing toward a woven wicker chair beside the table.

Ther’Abella propped her polearm against the carved bookshelf and slid into the chair, her knees together and her posture rigid.

"My Lady?"

A slow faint dusting of pink began to spread over the pale skin of Eluned’s cheeks.

It was subtle, like a drop of pomegranate juice sinking into milk, but it was unmistakably there.

"Tell me," Eluned said, leaning forward slightly, her green eyes fixed on Ther’Abella’s pupils. "What is romance?"

Ther’Abella’s face ignited in an instant. A violent heat rushed to her pointed ears, turning the tips dark red.

"R-Romance?" Ther’Abella stammered, her fingers clutching her knees. "Well, it’s when two people find an affinity that goes beyond duty.. You care for someone’s happiness more than your own comfort... Your chest tightens when you see them approach, your thoughts return to them when you’re alone in the dark, and you want to hold their hand, share their meals, and stand between them and harm."

Eluned listened without blinking, her fingers flat on the cedar table.

"I still find it confusing," Eluned murmured, shaking her head. "Even after a thousand years of watching the lower districts from the canopy, the mechanics make very little sense."

She looked down at her own pale hands and flexed her fingers slowly.

"I am a spirit of pure nature," she explained, her voice carrying a rare, quiet wistfulness. "I can detect the currents of sorrow. I can feel the sharpness of anger... it moves like lightning scorching dry timber but because I was born complete, because my mother passed her divine mantle to me the instant I opened my eyes, I cannot embody these things naturally... It is a wall, like a limitation placed upon my very divinity."

She poked the open page of the romance guide with one fingernail.

SNAP!

A burst of green life flared from the tip of her nail. The book shuddered as thick, pale-wood roots exploded from the spine, splitting the leather in two.

Within three seconds the manual had transformed into a small leafy dogwood sapling that sat upright on the table with its branches trembling in the draft.

Eluned looked at the little tree.

Her lower lip pushed out slightly and she pouted.

It was a small genuinely frustrated pout that looked utterly bizarre on an immortal goddess.

"When am I going to fall in love at this rate?" she grumbled softly, crossing her arms beneath her chest.

Ther’Abella stared, dumbfounded.

In every ceremonial gathering, in every assembly of the high houses, Lady Eluned was a monument of serene majesty.

She commanded the sky, she dictated the harvest, and she looked down on kings without blinking.

Who could possibly guess that she sat alone in the library, stewing over her inability to feel a flutter in her stomach?

"Lady Eluned," Ther’Abella ventured carefully, leaning across the table. "Have you considered looking among the high lords? An elven arch-magus from the western terraces? Or perhaps an immortal from one of the outer pantheons? There are dozens of princes who would throw their armies into an abyss just to receive an audience..."

"No," Eluned said instantly with her tone flat and dismissive. "They are predictable... They look at me and they see the World Tree’s territory under their control. I doubt they can understand what love is..."

She lifted her chin, and her green eyes softened until they seemed to look straight through the ceiling of the library, staring into some distant unfathomable void beyond the Sovereign Realm itself.

"I know there is someone special for me," Eluned murmured. Her voice drifted, taking on a slow tone cadence that made Ther’Abella hold her breath. "I can feel the feeling in the deep roots... It is faint, like a bell ringing beneath deep water. I cannot see his face, and I cannot pinpoint his coordinates, but I know he does not walk within the Sovereign Realm. He is somewhere out there, beyond the veil in a way."

’Can deities actually sense their soulmates like that?’ Ther’Abella thought, her eyes widening.

A sudden sharp protectiveness flared in the young shieldmaiden’s chest.

If there truly was some unknown man out there destined to stand beside Lady Eluned, Ther’Abella would find him first.

She would test his steel, evaluate his manners, and make sure he wasn’t some arrogant loud-mouthed commoner before he was ever allowed within ten yards of the Goddess.

"Lady Eluned," Ther’Abella asked, tilting her head, "why do you even want this? Isn’t romantic longing a weakness? For an immortal guardian, an emotional anchor only gives your enemies something to target..."

"I am curious," Eluned answered simply.

Ther’Abella opened her mouth to argue, but Eluned kept speaking, her words flowing in a quiet breathless rhythm that carried an astonishing amount of buried emotion.

"As a primordial spirit, it is nearly impossible for me to produce offspring though I can but I’ll have to do it naturally... and it’ll be much harder since I can’t even alter the nature of my body that far," Eluned said, her jade eyes fixed on the miniature tree on the table. "My mother had to become ether itself just to bring forth Ellvi and myself... I do not want that. I want to know what it feels like to love someone so deeply that your chest aches. I want to walk through an orchard in the evening, leaning against his shoulder while the sun sets. I want to carry his children beneath my heart, not out of some necessity to preserve the World Tree, but because we chose each other... I want to hear little voices running across the floorboards... I want to cook a simple meal for someone who doesn’t bow when I hand them a bowl."

Ther’Abella sat completely still.

The longing in the Goddess’s voice was so thick that she felt a lump rise in her throat.

She had never heard Eluned speak like this, not in a thousand years of royal service.

Eluned paused as she blinked, and the soft dreamy glow faded from her eyes, replaced once more by that cool unreadable calm.

"It might just be my imagination," Eluned said, with a faint, self-deprecating shrug. "A stray thought caused by reading foolish books... In the end, it does not matter. I do not mind staying here with all of you as you are enough."

Ther’Abella felt a rush of heat in her chest, her hands clenching into fists on her knees.

"I like being with you too, Lady Eluned! We all do! We would never leave your side!"

Eluned let out a soft genuine laugh, sounding like a rare musical chime that brightened the entire library.

She stood up, her jade robes sweeping over the flagstones and pooling gracefully around her ankles.

"You are my family," Eluned said, reaching out to pat Ther’Abella’s silver head with a cool, gentle hand. "You, the Guard, and my sister Ellvi. I am grateful for your service..."

She withdrew her hand, her expression turning serious.

"However, I have a request for you, Ther’Abella."

Ther’Abella scrambled to her feet, instinctively saluting with her right hand over her collarbone. "Name it, My Lady."

"Tomorrow," Eluned said, her voice dropping into a quiet, firm register, "do not come to the World Tree... Tell Captain Kaelith and the others to stand down. None of you are to enter the inner sanctum until the day after tomorrow."

Ther’Abella blinked, her brow furrowing in confusion. "Do not come? But My Lady, the daily patrol schedule—"

"I know what I am saying," Eluned interrupted gently. "It will be a rest day for the entire guard... You have trained hard for three centuries without a single leave so go into the lower city, drink sweet wine and rest. I do not need protection every hour of the day."

Ther’Abella stared at her for a moment before the realization clicked into place.

Tomorrow was the first anniversary of the Elven Overlord’s death.

A year ago, the great warrior who had united the northern reaches had fallen in battle, swallowed by an abyssal rift.

Lady Eluned had regarded him as a true brother, one of the few people whose presence she had actively enjoyed.

Every year she planned to spend that day in total isolation within the core sanctum, fasting and communing with the deep roots, and the grief of this first anniversary had hung over her for weeks like a bruise.

Ther’Abella was also aware of the rumors, which had grown louder in recent weeks.

A few bitter, disgraced elves in the outer rings whispered that Eluned had orchestrated his death using black magic to consolidate her reign over Yggdrasil.

Ther’Abella had always laughed at those tales.

Who could possibly believe that Lady Eluned, who couldn’t bring herself to crush a caterpillar, would kill her own kin with dark arts?

It did strike her as odd that the whispers had started so suddenly, all at once, in the same polished phrases, as if someone had written them out and handed them round.

"I understand, Lady Eluned," she said, bowing low. "I will inform the Captain and the squad. We will leave you to your peace..."

"Thank you, Ther’Abella," Eluned murmured, turning her back to look out through the library’s living archway.

"Ther’Abella! Move your legs, the drill is starting!" Evandra’s voice boomed from the courtyard outside.

"I’m coming!" Ther’Abella shouted back.

She grabbed her silver polearm, offered one last respectful bow to the Goddess, and walked toward the exit.

In the corridor she passed a woman coming the other way, tall and curvaceous in a corset of dark thorn-bark, her emerald hair so dark it was almost black.

Lady Ellvi paused with a warm smile and a languid wave, though her eyes lingered on Ther’Abella like the way a chess player studied a piece.

"A rest day?" Ellvi said pleasantly, in the voice of a woman who had somehow already heard. "How thoughtful of my sister."

Ther’Abella bowed, uneasy for a reason she couldn’t name, and hurried into the sunlight.

At the threshold she glanced back over her shoulder and waved with a bright youthful grin.

Eluned offered a small quiet wave in return.

’I want to be like her one day,’ Ther’Abella thought, gripping her weapon with pride as she sprinted toward the courtyard. ’Strong, kind, and untouchable...’

...

’Maybe I should have listened to Lady Eluned.’