[Year 1155 of the Trees. Late Summer. Taur-im-Duinath]
[Selas POV]
Two months in, and the settlement took shape one shovel-load at a time.
The frantic energy of those first weeks had settled into something steadier. Three thousand Avari who'd spent twenty years on the move were discovering that building a home demanded a different kind of endurance than walking toward one.
Day after day, Celestia's scouts fanned deeper into the surrounding lands, returning with sketches and notes that Dirmal's archivists stitched into an ever-growing web of maps.
The forest was enormous, far larger than we'd guessed from the outside. Every expedition pushed the boundaries of the known a little further and came back with something useful. A deposit here, a spring there, a clearing suitable for pasture or tillage.
Ordinary Avari explored the forest and the land around our future city at their own pace, tending to their assigned work and scouting locations for their families' future homes.
Some had already staked informal claims on particular clearings and riverbanks, marking trees with their family symbols in the manner we'd adopted during the March.
The livestock we'd bred up during the March got distributed across the nearest clearings, turning them into rough pastures. The mountain crossings had thinned the herds badly, but the survivors were tough stock. The kind that could eat whatever the forest offered and not complain about it.
We'd also begun a more deliberate program of selective breeding. Strongest bulls with the best cows. Horses chosen for stamina paired with those chosen for speed. Sheep that gave the thickest wool kept for breeding, the rest earmarked for meat and leather.
The same principle applied to our bonded animals. The largest and most responsive wolves bred together. Falcons selected for wingspan and temperament.
The results were too early to measure in any meaningful way. A single generation of livestock tells you nothing. But we had time. Elven time. Centuries of patient selection, generation after generation, compounding small advantages into large ones. The idea alone was worth the effort.
What did surprise me was what Light-sharing did to the bonded animals.
We'd known for years that the ósanwë bond between a handler and their partner made both sharper, more attuned.
But the deeper bonds, the ones where handlers regularly channeled Light into their partners over months and years, those were producing something else entirely.
The bonded animals lived longer. Measurably longer. A wolf that should have been slowing down at two years was still running hard at three, with no sign of decline.
The horses that Celestia's best riders had shared Light with since the Rhovanion steppes were larger than their unbonded siblings, broader in the chest, denser in the bone. And sharper. You could see it in their eyes, a quality of attention that went beyond animal instinct.
The effect was subtle and incremental. A bonded wolf wasn't twice as strong as a normal one. Maybe ten percent. Maybe fifteen. But ten percent compounded over generations, with each generation bred from the strongest bonded stock…
I found myself genuinely curious about where this would lead in a century. In five centuries. The Avari had stumbled onto something that no other Quendi had attempted, as far as I knew. Deliberate enhancement of animal partners through Light and selective breeding, pursued across elven timescales.
The horses wouldn't sprout wings. But given enough time, enough patience, enough Light? They'd become something remarkable. I was sure of it.
On a less pleasant note, the forest had teeth.
Celestia's scouts reported encountering bears deep in the southern reaches. Not the brown bears we'd known in Rhovanion, the ones that mostly wanted to be left alone and would oblige if you gave them space.
These were something different. Black as a moonless night, massive in the shoulder, and possessed of a temperament that made orc raiders look sociable by comparison.
They dwarfed anything we had seen before.
When one rose on its hind legs, it stood higher than the roofline of a wagon. The scouts swore its head nearly brushed the lower branches of the old oaks.
We'd managed to avoid provoking them so far. The scouts gave their territories a wide berth, marked the boundaries on Dirmal's maps, and moved on.
But that was a temporary arrangement. Three thousand people expanding into a forest meant the encounters would get worse, not better. Sooner or later we'd need a proper strategy for dealing with the great black bears of Taur-im-Duinath. Hunting them, avoiding them, or learning to coexist. Probably some combination of all three.
One more item for the list.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
The Tree exceeded every expectation.
By the end of the second month it stood taller than two Avari, which was impossible for a natural oak. Even by the standards of Quendi horticulture, this kind of growth was absurd. The trunk was straight and pale, the bark smooth as polished stone, and the leaves had a quality of light about them that defied easy description.
It glowed.
Gold and silver threaded together, the same mingled Light that Ilvëa and I had poured into the acorn before it was planted. In daylight, most trees vanished into the general green of the forest canopy. This one didn't. You could pick it out from a hundred paces, a faint shimmer that the eye caught even when the mind wasn't looking for it.
And Ilvëa was the reason.
She'd taken to the sapling with a devotion that bordered on obsession. Every morning she was there before dawn, hands pressed to the bark, eyes closed, Light flowing from her palms in slow, steady pulses. She talked to the Tree. Sang to it, sometimes. Studied the soil around its roots, the insects that visited its leaves, the pattern of its growth with an attention to detail that would have impressed Dirmal.
But her real innovation was what she called Cuileli, the Life-Sharing.
The concept was simple. Any willing Avari could come to the Tree, place their hands on the trunk, and offer a measure of their Light. The Tree would drink it in and, in return, pulse its own energy back through the contact. A mutual exchange, freely given.
The effect on the Tree was dramatic. Each session of Cuileli visibly accelerated its growth. The trunk thickened. New branches unfurled. The luminescence deepened. More remarkably, the Avari who participated reported feeling… refreshed. Lighter. As if the Tree gave back something different from what it received, something that settled in the chest and lingered for hours.
Those who came to the Tree troubled or anxious said it quieted something inside them, as if the weight they carried had been gently lifted and set aside. The restless slept better.
The grieving found their grief still there but softened. And everyone, without exception, walked away with a surge of energy and a lightness in their step that lasted the rest of the day. More than one Avari showed up to their work shift afterward grinning for no reason they could explain.
Word spread quickly. By the second week of Cuileli, there was a line.
Ilvëa managed the process with the calm efficiency of someone who'd found her purpose. She guided each participant through the technique, corrected their form, helped those who struggled to open their Light to an unfamiliar recipient. Balga's farmers assisted, but the knowledge and the instinct were Ilvëa's.
Between the Tree and the settlement, she was everywhere.
She'd pick up Avarin words from the farmers and use them on the builders, mangling the pronunciation badly enough to get laughs but improving fast enough to earn respect. She traded knowledge freely, teaching the herbalists about plants native to western Beleriand that the Avari had never encountered, and learning in return about the medicinal traditions Mireth's healers had developed on the March.
She told stories. In the evenings and on feast days, she'd gather an audience and talk for hours. The Great Journey of the Eldar. The Valar and Ainur the Avari had never met. The Maiar who served Ulmo in the waters of the Belegaer. The doom of love that bound Elwë and Melian. The shores of Aman that she'd glimpsed from afar before turning back.
The Avari listened with fascination. For the first time in their existence, they were hearing the other side of the story. The world beyond their own experience, told by someone who'd walked it.
Without knowing it, Ilvëa's words were planting seeds of their own.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Same period. Various locations around the settlement]
Whispers traveled fast in a settlement of three thousand. Faster than scouts, faster than falcons, and considerably less reliable.
"…we live in forests just like the Eglath and the Mithrim, but the Falathrim…"
"Want to see their harbors?"
"Of course! They're the only ones who live by the sea…"
"…didn't the Vanyar say it's somewhere to the north?"
"She never crossed the northern mountains…"
"…this forest is almost the same as the ones in Rhovanion and Eriador…"
"…how cold is it up north? How do the Mithrim even manage?"
"…sure, Círdan the Shipwright is a lord like Selas, but he still recognized Elu Thingol as the highest king among the Eldar of Beleriand."
"Well of course! Elwë Thingol is Enel's eldest son!"
"…if those abandoned Eldar founded their own kingdom and chose their own king, then why can't we?"
"…our Chief is also a son of the progenitor!"
"Let the Eldar keep their kings. We'll come up with our own titles…"
"…we already picked a spot by the river to build our family's home…"
"…you want to travel? The March wasn't enough for you?"
"…have you seen the Fair One with the children? She had twelve of them sitting in a circle around the Tree yesterday, teaching them the names of every star in the Valacirca. In Quendian and Avarin both."
"My daughter won't stop talking about her. Says Ilvëa's hair looks like the Light of Laurelin caught in running water."
"She's learning Avarin faster than my son learned to count. And she doesn't butcher the accent nearly as badly as she used to…"
"…why is that Vanyar the one growing the Chief's tree?"
"That acorn was her gift to Selas before the Exodus. She has every right to tend it."
"But she's Eldar, not Avari…"
"Not yet, anyway."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means what it means. Have you seen the way the Chief looks at her?"
"Have you seen the way he looks at everyone now? The man actually laughed yesterday. Out loud and at nothing. Vertalas nearly fell over."
"I heard they were walking along the Taurion again last night. Him, the Fair One, and Celestia. Talking until the stars turned."
"Our Chief, taking an evening stroll instead of reading reports? Somebody check him for fever."
"My wife says he smiled at the bread she brought to the Council tent. She's been baking for twenty years and that's the first time."
"Love does strange things to serious men."
"Who said anything about love? I said he smiled at bread."
"…my beloved came back from scouting yesterday. His patrol reached the northern edge of the forest. Beyond it, nothing but mountains stretching endlessly from the Gelion all the way to the sunset!"
"…Gelasiël Ufestil already recruited Avari for another mineral extraction settlement…"
"…my brother works the farmland on the nearest southern clearing now…"
"…have you tried the Life-Sharing? It's strange, but after, I felt like the world got quieter. In a good way."
"…the Tree is growing so fast you can almost watch it. Whatever the Fair One's doing, it's working…"
"…she's good for him, I think. Good for all of us. Even the gloomy ones are grinning after the Life-Sharing."
"Good for him? The man led us across half the world. He deserves someone who makes him forget about drainage canals for five minutes."
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Same period. The settlement]
[Selas POV]
The responsible advisors wasted no time organizing extraction sites near the settlement. For now, we were stockpiling. Once the earthworks finished, we'd start applying our cement and concrete in earnest.
By now the Avari had named everything. Cement had become Avari Binding Stone in official usage, though most just called it the Mixture. Concrete was Liquid Stone when wet and Avari Stone once it hardened. The whole construction approach they'd dubbed Earthworks Building, which I thought had a nice ring to it. Better than anything I would have come up with.
Beyond the plans for widening and deepening the Taurion and digging the moats, Temeryl Isalion and Balga Sheselan tackled sewage planning. The system would channel waste outside the settlement to a processing site. No sense polluting a pristine river with the byproducts of three thousand people.
After all, in this world I wasn't a human fighting nature for my place under the sun. I was Quendi. A guardian of the natural world by default. Ecology was everything. We'd run our own version of Greenpeace around here.
Naturally, all these grand plans would stay on paper without a supply chain, especially tools. So along the planned riverbanks, Opheon Mendales began organizing craft workshops.
At my Council meeting, he proposed placing them downstream on the eastern side of the planned outer Great Wall. His reasoning was sound: a dedicated craft quarter on one bank, a trade quarter on the other, with warehouses and river-port docks lining both sides.
The obvious reason for placing industry on the river was future waterwheel power.
I'd sketched out the basic designs months ago, and Opheon had refined them into proper blueprints that now lived in a growing stack on his workshop table. A wheel driven by current, turning a shaft, driving a hammer or a grinding stone. Simple in theory.
{image: First river mill of the Avari}
In practice, it required precision carpentry, metal fittings we couldn't yet produce in quantity, and a river deep enough to generate real force. All of that was coming, but not tomorrow. But nothing stopped us from planning with future logistics in mind.
And heavy crafts belonged in their own district, far from residential areas.
The trade quarter, the craft quarter, the port, all of them too noisy and dirty for neighbors.
Once we'd opened the discussion to district planning, every advisor wanted in.
Dirmal Falireël, our archivist, wanted a Hall of Avari Knowledge to house the accumulated manuscripts, scrolls, and books.
I pushed the idea further. Not just a hall for storage, but a public place. A space where any Avari could walk in, sit down, and lose themselves in a manuscript for an afternoon.
A library, in the truest sense. Something stirred in the back of my mind when I said it, a ghost of fluorescent lights and creaky chairs and the particular silence of a room full of people studying and reading. My student years. Another life, another world. But the principle was the same.
A civilization that didn't read was a civilization standing still.
Amalaë Talkrimael, our education advisor, demanded schools for children and young people.
And she was right to demand. The March-era wagon schools had done their job, but they'd been improvised, limited, built for survival rather than growth. What we needed now was a real system. Structured curricula.
Schools for young children, schools for adolescents, specialized instruction for those with particular talents. History, language, mathematics, natural philosophy, craftsmanship, military science. The whole thing needed to be designed from the ground up, and frankly it might have been the most important task facing us. More important than walls and moats.
Amalaë and I agreed to sit down separately and hammer out a proper program.
And that wasn't even a tenth of the ideas and plans that surfaced. Everyone had a vision for their corner of the future city. Market squares, guild halls, public baths, observatories, gardens. The list grew longer with every conversation, and we hadn't laid a single foundation stone.
In short, there was no shortage of work.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[One of the many council sessions.]
[Selas POV]
I sat back and let them go.
The session had been running for hours.
Temeryl was sketching furiously, arguing with Opheon about load-bearing walls while Balga leaned over their shoulders and pointed out that neither of them had accounted for root systems in the eastern quarter.
Vertalas had pulled Yalinim into a side conversation about barracks placement that had somehow spiraled into a full redesign of the training plaza.
Dirmal was quietly measuring distances on his map with a piece of string, lips moving as he calculated.
Nobody was waiting for me to tell them what to do.
That thought settled in my chest and stayed there, warm and heavy.
At Cuiviénen, I'd been the engine behind everything. Every idea, every system, every push forward had started with me and been dragged into existence through sheer stubbornness. The Avari back then had been Quendi in the truest sense — patient and contemplative. Content to let centuries pass between innovations. Getting them to build a sewage system had felt like convincing stones to roll uphill.
This was different.
These people had changed.
The March had changed them, or maybe I had, or maybe they'd changed themselves and I'd just been standing nearby looking important.
Whatever the cause, the Avari in this tent were not the dreamy stargazers of Cuiviénen. They thought faster. Planned harder. Argued with a focus and urgency that would have baffled any other elven kindred.
Other Quendi drifted through centuries like leaves on a slow river. My people sprinted through them. Not at a human pace, not yet, not even close. Elven lifespans made real urgency almost impossible to sustain.
And the generation born on the March, the ones who'd never known anything but movement and danger and constant adaptation, they were something else entirely.
They'd taken the seeds I'd planted and grown forests I couldn't have imagined.
All I had to do anymore was point in a direction and offer a nudge. They'd grab the idea, tear it apart, rebuild it better, and hand back something that made my original concept look like a rough sketch.
This time, the city would be structured from the first stone. Not the improvised sprawl of Cuiviénen, where we'd built as needs arose. This time, we had planners who thought in systems, builders who understood foundations, and a population that demanded quality because they'd survived long enough to know the cost of shortcuts.
It was the best thing I'd ever accomplished as Chief. Not the walls. Not the formations. Not the technology. The people. The fact that I'd managed to find them, grow them.
Ilvëa had adapted to this pace with surprising ease. Most Quendi from outside our community would have been overwhelmed by the sheer velocity of Avari daily life, the constant planning, the urgency, the expectation that tomorrow should be measurably better than today.
But she'd known me since the beginning, since before I'd infected an entire people with my particular brand of restless impatience.
I caught myself wondering what she was doing right now. Probably at the Tree. Probably with soil on her hands and a look of intense concentration that she'd deny was adorable if I pointed it out.
I turned my attention back to the blueprints. Eventually.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[End of Chapter 12.1]