The palace was still buzzing with excitement from Aaswa's wedding announcement the previous evening. Sleep had come late for all of us — we had spent the night talking, laughing, dreaming aloud, and making plans that stretched well past midnight. Candles had burned low in their holders, and the warmth of celebration had lingered in every room like the last notes of a song.
By morning, no one seemed to want the feeling to end.
The family gathered again in the private garden as the sun climbed gently above the palace walls. It was a quiet, beautiful space — flowering vines curled along the stone archways, and the air carried the soft scent of jasmine. Breakfast was laid out simply on a long table: warm bread, fresh fruit, honey, and tea. No ceremony, no formality. Just family.
We were finishing our tea when Nefilina approached me.
She moved gracefully, the way she always did — unhurried, deliberate, as though each step was part of something larger. Her silver hair caught the morning light and gleamed like moonlight trapped in silk. When she spoke, her voice carried that same melodic, song-like quality I had come to recognize as uniquely her own, soft and clear, the kind of voice that made you want to listen closely.
"Mirel," she said, stepping beside me with a gentle expression, "if you truly want to make Aaswa and Saarna's marriage perfect, there is something you should consider."
I set down my cup and gave her my full attention. Around us, the rest of the family continued their quiet conversations, but something in her tone told me this mattered.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
She stepped a little closer, her eyes sincere, her voice low enough to feel like a confidence shared between two people who trusted each other.
"My people — the elves of Elfino Kingdom — are deeply connected to nature and to ancient magic," she began. "Our weavers can create fabrics that shimmer with the light of real starlight, woven into every thread. Our florists can grow flowers that bloom only for weddings, flowers that never wilt, never brown, never fade — as though time itself agrees to leave them untouched. Our musicians can play songs that seem to make the very air feel alive with joy, so that even those who do not know the words find themselves smiling."
She paused for a moment, then continued softly.
"If you were to invite my king — King Elfino — and allow some of my people to help with the wedding preparations… it would not simply be a beautiful ceremony. It would be unforgettable. The kind of wedding that is spoken of for generations."
I smiled warmly. It was a generous offer, and I could see something genuine behind her words — a quiet hope, carefully held.
"That would be wonderful," I said. "Of course we can invite them."
For just a brief moment, something shifted in Nefilina's eyes. A flicker — relief, perhaps, and something deeper beneath it, something she hadn't quite put into words.
"Thank you," she said softly. "My father… the Elf King… would be truly honored." She paused again, and when she spoke next, her voice was quieter. "And it would give me a chance to see my home again."
There was no sadness in her words, but there was tenderness — the kind that belongs to a person who has been away from something they love for a long time. I did not press her. Whatever her reasons were, they were her own. If she wanted to see her father, I had no desire to stand in the way of that.
"Then it's decided," I said. "We'll travel to Elfino Kingdom and extend the invitation personally."
Aaswa, who had been sitting nearby and clearly listening to every word, straightened in her chair with a bright look in her eyes. "I'll come with you." She glanced beside her. "Saarna too, if she wants."
Before I could say anything further, the sound of approaching footsteps came from the garden path, and the rest of the family appeared all at once, as though they had been waiting just around the corner.
Vanisha's eyes lit up the moment she heard the tail end of the conversation. "Did I hear Elfino Kingdom?" she asked, her voice already full of excitement. "The forest elves? Oh, we are absolutely coming."
Aerika was right beside her, grinning with the same enthusiasm she brought to everything. "You couldn't keep me away. I've always wanted to see their floating crystal groves with my own eyes. And the singing trees — I've only ever read about them."
Lyla stepped forward more quietly, but there was no hesitation in her expression. "If everyone is going," she said, her voice steady and warm, "then I'd like to come as well. I want to be part of this."
Saarna reached over and placed her hand gently on Aaswa's arm, her smile easy and certain. "And I'm certainly not letting you go anywhere without me."
Then came the smallest voice of all, and the most insistent.
"Daddy!"
I felt two small arms wrap around my leg and looked down to find Himel gazing up at me with enormous, pleading eyes, a tiny glowing flower clutched in one hand — some trinket he had found in the garden and immediately decided was magical.
"Daddy, I want to see the magic forest!" he declared, with the absolute conviction that only a child can carry. "Please, please, please can I come? Please?"
I looked up from him and took in the whole picture before me — Aaswa glowing with hope, Saarna steady and smiling, Vanisha and Aerika practically vibrating with excitement, Lyla quietly earnest, Nefilina watching with a soft expression, and Himel still clinging to my leg, awaiting his verdict.
Something rose in my chest — warm and full and impossible not to laugh at.
And so I laughed.
"Alright," I said, shaking my head with a smile I couldn't have contained even if I'd tried. "The whole family is coming. Every single one of you." I reached down and ruffled Himel's hair, and he let out a triumphant cheer that startled a pair of birds from the garden wall. "We leave at dawn tomorrow."
****
The next morning, we set out before the sun had fully risen.
The sky was still painted in pale shades of rose and gold when we rode through the palace gates, our horses breathing soft clouds into the cool air. Himel sat in front of me in the saddle, bundled warmly, already turning his head in every direction as though afraid of missing something. The rest of the family rode in a loose, easy group behind us — no rigid formation, no formal procession. Just a family on a journey, moving together toward something none of us had ever seen.
The road leading away from the Coressa Empire was familiar at first — wide and well-worn, cutting through open fields and gentle hillsides. But as the miles passed beneath our horses' hooves, the landscape began to change. Slowly, quietly, almost without announcement, the ancient forest crept in.
It started at the edges — a few tall trees standing apart from the others, their trunks wider than three men standing with arms outstretched. Then more joined them, and more still, until the open sky above us narrowed into a long, leafy corridor. The trees grew taller with every mile we traveled, stretching upward as though reaching for something beyond the clouds. Their leaves carried a faint, soft glow — not blinding, not unnatural, but warm and steady, like the last light of an ember that refuses to go out.
Sunlight filtered down through the high canopy in long, slanting shafts of gold, cutting through the shadow in graceful columns and pooling on the moss-covered ground below. The air changed too. It grew cooler, cleaner, and carried the mingled scents of rich earth, wildflowers tucked between roots, and something else entirely — something that had no name but felt ancient and alive. Magic, perhaps. The kind that doesn't announce itself loudly but settles quietly into your lungs with every breath.
Himel had gone completely silent for nearly a full minute, which, for him, was remarkable.
Then he gasped.
"Daddy, look!" He shot one small arm out, nearly knocking me in the chin. "That bird has rainbow wings!"
A small flock of birds swept past us in a shimmering blur, weaving between the trees in loose, effortless loops. Their feathers caught the golden light and scattered it — violet, green, copper, blue — shifting with every beat of their wings, every turn and tilt in the air.
"They're called prism sparrows," Aerika said from her horse beside us, her voice carrying the pleased tone of someone who had done their reading before the trip. "They change color depending on their mood. Watch them long enough and you can almost tell what they're feeling."
Himel stared with his mouth slightly open. "How do you know that?"
"I read," she said simply, and smiled.
As if it had heard them talking, one of the prism sparrows broke away from the flock and curved back toward us in a low, curious arc. It slowed as it neared Himel, hovering for just a moment — then landed lightly on his shoulder.
The bird's feathers flushed a vivid, unmistakable pink.
Then, as quickly as it had come, it lifted off and rejoined the others, vanishing into the trees in a flicker of color.
Himel turned to me with the most delighted expression I had ever seen on his face. "It liked me!"
"Clearly," I said, laughing.
Vanisha rode up on my other side, her smile easy and warm. "Careful, little one," she said, leaning toward Himel with a mock-serious look. "If you keep attracting animals like that, we'll have an entire zoo following us into the kingdom."
Himel considered this very seriously for a moment. "That would be good, actually."
Vanisha caught my eye over his head, and we both quietly laughed.
The forest deepened around us as we rode on. The trees grew older and grander, their roots rising above the ground in great curved arches before plunging back into the earth. Flowers grew in clusters along the path, small and bright, in colors that didn't quite exist in the world outside the forest. Somewhere above us, the wind moved through the high branches and produced a sound that was almost — almost — like music.
Then Lyla's horse slowed ahead of us, and several voices called out softly.
A family of deer had stepped onto the path.
They were unlike any deer any of us had seen before. Their coats were a deep, luminous white, and their antlers — even the young ones' small nubs — shimmered like cut crystal, catching the fractured light and sending tiny prisms dancing across the tree trunks around them. They moved without the usual skittishness of wild animals, crossing the path in quiet, unhurried steps, as though they had been here long before any road existed and knew it.
The smallest of them — a fawn, barely reaching Lyla's stirrup — paused at the edge of the path and turned its large, dark eyes upward. Then it stepped closer to Lyla's horse, stretched its nose forward, and pressed it gently into her open hand.
No one said anything for a moment.
The expression that crossed Lyla's face was one she rarely showed — completely unguarded, soft in a way that had nothing to do with performance or politeness. She held very still, as though afraid the slightest movement would break the moment.
"They're so gentle," she whispered, almost to herself.
The fawn blinked once, then turned and trotted back to its family. The deer moved on, disappearing between the roots of an ancient tree as silently as they had come.
Saarna, riding just behind Lyla beside Aaswa, broke the quiet with a warm grin. "Lyla," she said, "you have yourself a new friend. Should we bring it along? I'm sure it would enjoy the wedding."
Lyla straightened in her saddle and looked forward primly. "Don't be silly."
But the faintest smile remained at the corner of her mouth, and no one missed it.
The laughter had barely settled when the trouble started.
A sound came from somewhere in the upper branches — a rapid, chittering noise, sharp and indignant, like a very small creature who had a very large complaint. Several of us looked up at the same time.
The trees on either side of the path were full of them.
Sky-squirrels, as it turned out, were exactly what the name suggested — small, absurdly fluffy creatures built for the air as much as the branches. They had broad, flat tails and thin membranes of skin that stretched between their limbs like the wings of a leaf, allowing them to glide from tree to tree with surprising speed and absolutely no sense of caution. Their eyes were bright and quick, and the way they watched the group moving below them made it very clear they were not simply curious.
They were calculating.
The first one launched itself from a branch with a cheerful leap before anyone had time to react. It sailed downward in a smooth, silent glide, landed directly on top of Aaswa's head, and immediately buried both small paws into his hair to steady itself.
Aaswa went rigid.
The squirrel, completely unbothered, leaned sideways, reached one nimble paw into the open flap of Aaswa's saddlebag, and extracted a piece of dried fruit with the efficiency of someone who had done this many times before. Then it sat up straight on his head and began eating, chattering loudly and rapidly — a high, scolding sound that carried through the trees, as though it were Aaswa who had done something wrong.
"Hey!" Aaswa twisted in his saddle, swatting carefully at the creature. "That's mine!"
The squirrel chattered louder, completely unintimidated, and took another bite.
The rest of us absolutely lost our composure.
Saarna had her hand pressed over her mouth, her shoulders shaking. Vanisha made no attempt whatsoever to hide her laughter. Even Nefilina, who was usually composed and quiet, pressed her lips together with a look of very dignified amusement. Himel simply pointed and laughed with the full, uncomplicated joy that only children manage.
Aaswa looked at all of us. Then he looked up at the squirrel still sitting on his head.
The squirrel looked back down at him, finished the last of the dried fruit, and chattered one final time — short, dismissive — before launching itself off his head and gliding back up into the trees, vanishing among the branches as smoothly as it had arrived.
Aaswa smoothed his hair back into place with as much dignity as he could manage.
"Not a word," he said flatly.
"We weren't going to say anything," Saarna said, in the tone of someone who was absolutely going to say something later.
The squirrel let out a sharp, chattering reply — and then, as if making a deliberate point, released the fruit from its tiny claws. It fell in a perfect arc and landed squarely on Saarna's lap.
Saarna looked down at it, then up at the smug little creature still perched on the branch above. A laugh burst out of her before she could stop it, bright and unrestrained.
"Well," she managed between giggles, "it seems even the animals of this forest think you talk too much on a journey."
Aaswa opened his mouth to protest, but Himel got there first. The boy thrust a finger toward his uncle, his small body shaking with laughter so violent he nearly toppled sideways off his horse.
"Uncle Aaswa got robbed by a flying rat!"
"It is not a rat," Vanisha said firmly, though the corners of her mouth were fighting a losing battle against a smile. "It's a sky-squirrel. And frankly, it has excellent taste."
Aaswa pressed a hand to his chest as though wounded. Before he could gather a single dignified word in his defense, a rush of wind swept past Aerika. She blinked. Then she looked down at her cloak, where a small round button had been — and was no longer.
High above, the sky-squirrel glided triumphantly between the branches, the shiny button clutched in its paws like a hard-won treasure.
"Thief!" Aerika cried, pointing upward with an expression of magnificent outrage. "You come back here right now!"
The squirrel, predictably, did not come back.
Lyla had pressed both hands over her mouth in a valiant attempt at composure, but her shoulders were shaking helplessly. "They're bolder than palace thieves," she whispered, voice trembling with held-back laughter.
We rode on, deeper into the forest, and the world around us shifted as we went. The path gradually narrowed until it was little more than a winding lane between ancient trees, their trunks so wide it would have taken six people with linked arms to encircle one. Along the edges of the path, clusters of mushrooms grew in quiet rows, each one glowing with a soft, steady light — pale blue and warm gold — casting a gentle shimmer across the roots and moss even where the canopy above blocked out the sun.
Then came the horses.
A herd of them emerged from between the trees without a sound, moving parallel to our group along a path only they seemed to know. What made them extraordinary was their hooves — each one carved from what appeared to be living crystal, catching the light with every step and scattering tiny sparks across the ground behind them. Wherever they walked, faint trails of light lingered for a moment before fading, like the memory of stars.
Himel had gone completely still, which for Himel was perhaps the most remarkable thing the forest had yet produced. His eyes were enormous.
Then one of the younger horses — smaller than the rest, curious and unhurried — drifted toward our group. It slowed beside Himel's horse, stretched out its long neck, and licked the back of his hand in a slow, deliberate greeting.
Himel let out a squeal of pure delight. "It tickles!"
Saarna watched the exchange with a look of deep satisfaction before turning to Aaswa with raised eyebrows. "You see? Even wild horses are friendlier than you."
"I am plenty friendly," Aaswa said, with great dignity. "You may ask the sky-squirrel who stole my fruit for a character reference."
The group dissolved into laughter all over again. Even the crystal horses seemed unbothered by the noise, continuing their silent, sparkling procession before gradually drifting back between the trees and disappearing.
By the time the sun had climbed to its highest point, warm and bright above the canopy, we stopped to rest beside a stream that cut through the forest floor like a ribbon of broken glass. The water was extraordinarily clear, and beneath its surface, small fish moved in quick, darting groups — each one glowing faintly, their scales catching the light in shifting colors.
Every few seconds, one of them would leap from the water in a graceful arc, and wherever it broke the surface, a trail of color hung in the air behind it — red fading into violet, gold melting into green — before dissolving like mist.
Himel, naturally, decided he needed to catch one.
He leaned out from the bank, arms stretched wide, expression one of absolute concentration. For one moment, it almost looked as though he might manage it.
Then came the splash. An impressive one. The kind that sent a wide sheet of water outward in all directions — including directly onto Lyla, soaking her sleeve from elbow to wrist.
Lyla gasped. The cold water hit sharp and sudden. She looked at her arm, then at Himel.
Himel looked back at her with the most innocent expression a thoroughly guilty child has ever worn. "Sorry, Aunty Lyla." A pause. "But they're so pretty."
Lyla stared at him for one long moment — and then she laughed, reaching out to ruffle his damp hair. "You little troublemaker."
Vanisha handed over a dry cloth with the calm efficiency of someone well practiced in managing small disasters. "He gets it from his father," she remarked pleasantly. "Always causing little accidents and looking surprised afterward."
I raised both hands at once. "I had nothing to do with this."
"Of course not," Aerika said, with a smile that suggested she believed absolutely none of it.
We returned to our horses and pressed on, and the forest seemed to grow more alive with every mile. The trees stretched taller, the light between their branches thicker with that warm, almost visible magic that seemed to breathe through this place like a second air.
The parrots found us somewhere near midday.
A whole family of them descended onto a low branch just overhead — bright feathered, sharp-eyed, regarding us with obvious intelligence. We had not been riding beneath them for more than a minute when the first one opened its beak.
"Daddy! Look! Magic fish!"
Himel's exact voice. His exact pitch. His exact breathless excitement. Coming from a bird.
Before anyone could react, a second parrot ruffled its feathers importantly and called out, "Hey! That's mine!" — in a tone unmistakably borrowed from Aaswa and the sky-squirrel incident not an hour past.
Saarna gripped her saddle as laughter overtook her entirely. "Even the birds are making fun of you, love," she called back to Aaswa, barely able to get the words out.
Aaswa watched the parrots with an expression of dignified resignation. "This forest," he said slowly, "has very clearly chosen a side." He glanced at Saarna. "Yours."
"Smart forest," she said.
At the front of our group, Nefilina rode in her usual quiet way, a little apart from the laughter and noise. But every so often I caught a glimpse of her profile — the small, private smile at the corner of her mouth, the way her shoulders had lost their tension somewhere in the first hour of riding.
She looked lighter. Not simply rested, but genuinely at ease in a way I had not seen before. As though something in the air of this place recognized her and was glad she had returned.
We still had many hours ahead of us before we would reach the heart of the Elfino Kingdom. The trees continued to climb, broader and more ancient with every mile, and the magic thickened in the air around us until it was almost something you could touch — warm and present, like the feeling just before rain.
To be continued…