Elder Mahwen the Record Keeper of Eldengrove—the keeper of memory, lore, and truth. one of the oldest living members of Eldengrove, her long silver hair braided with beads of bark and moss harvested from sacred ancestor trees.
Her apprentice, Talyra Mossglen the flame spirited. At just thirteen, she was chosen by Elder Mahwen during the last Naming Ceremony—not because she was serene or reverent, but because when she listened, she truly listened. She has wild curls the color of dusk-leaves and a smattering of freckles like moss spatter. Her eyes are quick and full of wonder, and she never walks when she can climb or swing.
-----
A steady rustle of parchment and leaf-scrolls filled the chamber, layered with the soft pulse of ancestor-light emanating from the glowing roots that lined the archive walls. The air smelled of pressed moss, time, and faint wildflowers.
Elder Mahwen sat cross-legged atop a woven mat, her weathered hands sifting gently through scroll leaves older than her own long years. Her eyes, sharp as ever, narrowed in suspicion.
“Talyra,” she called in a low, steady tone. “What do we say about swinging from the root chandeliers?”
From above came a muffled oof, followed by a fluttering cascade of dust. Then a small thud, and the unmistakable voice of Talyra Mossglen: “That it’s ‘utterly disrespectful and will cause the ancestors to drop dead a second time’?”
Mahwen sighed. “And yet here we are.”
Talyra peeked around a thick curtain of hanging leaves, her curls filled with dust motes and glowing pollen. “I was just checking the acoustics,” she said brightly. “What if we need to echo a story properly across the chamber? Have you ever sung a Sky-Tale from the rafters? It’s kind of amazing.”
Mahwen held up a delicate scroll. “You nearly landed on the Treaty of Boughs. That would’ve rewritten two centuries of history into one unfortunate splat.”
“But think of the drama!” Talyra said, tiptoeing closer with twinkling eyes. “Elder Brannoch stabbing the treaty leaf midair to save it! I could stage the whole scene with leaf-blades and dramatic humming!”
“Sit down, child,” Mahwen said, but her lips twitched, betraying amusement.
Talyra plopped down, all elbows and enthusiasm. “What are you reading?”
Mahwen held out the scroll. “An account of the first moss harvest after the Long Rains. A quiet year, but the elder who wrote this described the texture of the moss in thirty-seven variations.”
Talyra leaned in, wide-eyed. “Ohhh. That's poetic stubbornness.”
Mahwen chuckled. “That, dear one, is archival devotion.”
For a moment, the room fell into a companionable hush. The roots pulsed faintly, sensing the peace. Then—
“Mahwen?” Talyra whispered.
“Hm?”
“Do you think the ancestors ever swung from the chandeliers?”
Mahwen didn’t even glance up. “The wildest among them most certainly did child.”
Talyra grinned, and the chamber glowed just a little brighter.
........
Beneath the Listening Canopy, Archive Night:
The Whisperleaf Archive was quieter than usual. Outside, the wind rustled through the branches like a thousand hushed voices, and inside, the air held a weight—of anticipation, of stories not yet born.
Talyra sat with her knees pulled to her chest on a wide bough near the top of the archive’s dome, a single star just barely visible through a rare crack in the dense canopy. She was trying not to fidget. Mahwen sat below, quill in hand, watching with her usual patience laced in sternness.
“You asked to weave a Sky-Tale,” Mahwen said, voice soft but firm. “Now let’s hear it. Remember: it must hold truth, not just sparkles.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Talyra took a breath. “Okay. Okay, here goes.”
She leaned forward and began, eyes trained on that one far-off star.
---
“In the time-before-branches, before even the oldest tree breathed, there was only sky. Sky and silence.
But the silence grew lonely. And so, from the edge of nothing, a whisper curled—a dream of green, of reaching, of roots.
The sky sang a single note, high and blue, and from that note came the first seed.
It fell, spinning, laughing, and where it landed, the world became.
Trees unfolded like stories. Leaves began to listen. And the sky, delighted, gave them stars—not many, just enough, like a secret only the brave could find.
But the trees loved too deeply. They grew taller and taller, reaching for the sky that made them. They covered the world in forest.
And so the stars became hidden. Not stolen. Not lost. Just waiting.
Waiting for someone brave enough to climb high enough to listen again.
That is why we are the Seekers. That is why I, Talyra Mossglen, will find the stars. And when I do, I’ll give them back to the trees.”
---
She finished, breathless, eyes shining with unshed tears and the weight of something too big for words.
Mahwen didn’t speak at first. Then she stood, walked over, and touched Talyra’s forehead gently.
“That,” she whispered, “was a Sky-Tale.”
Talyra blinked. “Really? Even the part where the sky sang?”
“Especially that part,” Mahwen said, smiling at last. “Though we may need to revise the part where you give stars to trees like festival lanterns.”
Talyra laughed.
-----
RECORDS:
Scroll Leaf #342-ACategory: Sky-Weavings | Subtype: First-TellingsTranscribed by: Elder Mahwen, Whisperleaf ArchiveDate: 14th Windmonth, Year of the Fifth Canopy BendOrator: Apprentice Talyra Mossglen
---
“The Storm Bear and the Bramble Star”A Sky-Tale, as performed (dramatically) by Talyra Mossglen
> Once, when the sky still whispered secrets to saplings and the stars dared peek through the branches, a Storm Bear climbed the eastern rise of Blumhirn.
His steps shook the canopy. Leaves curled in fright. The wind ran ahead of him, warning nests and nutlings. He was big—not just bear big, but cloud big, and made of thunder-stuff and muscle.
He came seeking the Bramble Star, a light caught in a vine-tangle at the edge of sky and leaf. The star had fallen—some say on purpose, some say by clumsy celestial accident. Either way, she twinkled there, stuck and curious, her light now part of the forest’s breath.
The Storm Bear growled:“Give me back the piece of sky. It does not belong to root-dwellers.”
But the forest sang. It sang not in words, but in rustle and breeze and the sharp hum of beetle wings. It sang to calm him, to remind him.
And a girl—just a village girl, with moss on her knees and a flute of bone and bark—played a single note. It rose like mist. It turned into a question.
“Why do you need it?”
The Storm Bear paused. No one had ever asked.
He sat. He pondered.And the Bramble Star, seeing his sadness, blinked once... and broke into a thousand tiny glimmers, flying into his fur, where they nestled like stardust in a stormcloud.
From then on, Storm Bears did not roar at forest folk. When storms came, villagers sang that same note, asking the wind to remember the story.
---
Marginalia – Elder Mahwen’s Notes:“She added a few impromptu dance steps and tripped over a scroll. The children loved it. I will allow it.”“Marked as official Sky-Tale. Should be performed during the Mosslight Festival.”
--------
Scroll Leaf #218-C – Transcribed in Elder Mahwen’s own hand“The Leaf That Listened”An elder’s tale to young minds, and perhaps to older ones who’ve forgotten how to listen.
---
In the time before the vines curled heavy with mosslight, when the songs of the wind were still learning their shape, there lived a young leaf named Ivi.
Ivi was not the tallest leaf on the branch.Not the brightest, nor the broadest, nor the first to unfurl in spring.She was the quiet one, clinging just beneath the others, nestled in the shadow of her elder siblings.
The other leaves fluttered loudly when the wind passed through, showing off their shimmers and their curls.They whispered about sunlight and breezes, about which squirrel had jumped where and who had heard the owl cough at dawn.But Ivi… Ivi simply listened.
She listened to the chatter.She listened to the hush between gusts.She listened to the roots far below, pulsing their slow heartbeat up through bark and branch.And one day, she heard something else.
A cry—soft, like a broken echo—drifting upward from the moss-thick floor.It was a child, lost and weeping, voice too faint for most to hear.The other leaves rustled and laughed and gossiped in the wind.
But Ivi heard. And Ivi called back.
Now, leaves don’t often speak in ways ears can catch.But she summoned the breeze.She bent her green to shimmer just so.She caught a thread of birdsong and nudged it toward the ground.
And the child looked up.
They followed the flicker.Saw the way the wind curved only there.Heard a whisper—like a lullaby made of leaf and sky—and followed it home.
The other leaves never noticed.But the tree did.
That autumn, when all the others turned gold and red and brown, Ivi stayed green.She stayed even as frost kissed her edges, and the winds called louder.She stayed until spring, when a new shoot unfurled from her stem—a whole branch of listening leaves.
---
Elder Mahwen’s note at the bottom, scrawled in deep green ink:
There is wisdom in silence. There is song in listening. And sometimes, the smallest ones bend the wind toward wonder.— Mahwen of the Archive, 3rd Crescent of Wind-Sighing
