The gate opened at the forest's edge, and Luminareth was already there.
The city had no walls and no skyline.
It had a forest so vast it filled the horizon, and every tree in it was alive with civilization.
Walkways of living wood connected trunk to trunk in a web that stretched for miles, buildings growing from the bark at every level, their walls half-timber and half-tree, windows catching morning light.
Bridges arced between canopy heights in curves no architect had drawn, because the wood had been asked, and the wood had agreed. At ground level, elves tended crops between the roots and berry-gatherers worked the understory with baskets on their backs. Above, spires of shaped heartwood rose through the canopy where the sunlight hit first.
The whole of it breathed with the patience of millennia.
Rosie leaned forward over Myrasyn's head, fingers tightening in blonde hair, and stared.
"Wow..." she breathed.
