[Year 1155 of the Trees. Early Summer]
[Selas POV]
We crossed the Gelion on a morning so still the water barely moved.
We made camp at the forest's edge, as we always did before pushing into unknown territory. Scouts first. Paths second. Column last.
Only this time, the trees were enormous.
Not tall in the way the Greenwood had been tall, or the oaks around Cuiviénen. These were something else entirely. Trunks wide enough that ten Avari linking arms couldn't circle them. Canopies so high the branches disappeared into a green twilight that swallowed sound and distance both.
I decided to see it for myself.
Doubled the guard, naturally. Twenty years on the road teaches you that surprises are never pleasant and always come when you're admiring the scenery.
The forest was… impressive. Dense undergrowth carpeted the floor between the great trunks. Wildlife moved everywhere, bold and unafraid. Deer watched us pass with the curious indifference of creatures that had never learned to fear anything on two legs. Birds called from branches so high they were invisible.
And it was quiet. Not the dead silence of an empty place, but the living hush of something ancient and undisturbed.
What exactly was everyone so afraid of? It was a forest. A massive one, sure, but a forest all the same.
"Greetings to you, Last Ones!"
The voice came from above. Sharp, clear, female, speaking Telerin with careful precision. Wary, but not hostile.
"Who are you, of what people, and why have you come to this forest?"
My guard snapped to attention instantly. Bows half-drawn, eyes scanning the canopy. Say what you will about my people, their reflexes were razor-sharp.

{ Image: Selas on alert }
I looked up.
A young Quendi woman perched on a broad branch twenty feet overhead, bow drawn and aimed with the easy confidence of someone who'd been climbing trees since before she could walk.

{ Image: The "stranger" from the Vanyar }
Golden hair. Eyes the color of a summer sky fading into deep ocean blue.
Minyar - First Kindred. What the Eldar now called the Vanyar.
What in Eru's name was a Vanyar doing here? Every last one of them should have been in Aman by now.
Then I noticed something else. The way she held her Light. Pulled inward, compressed, contained. Not radiating freely the way most Quendi did.
I only knew one Vanyar who'd ever learned to do that.
The realization hit me like cold water. I let out a slow breath that was half laugh, half disbelief.
"Greetings to you as well, Fair One," I said, offering a slight bow. "We are Nelyar. The Refused."
"Avari?" Her eyebrows shot up. The bow dipped. Then her eyes narrowed, scanning me head to toe, and I watched recognition bloom across her face.
"Selas?! Is that really you?!"
Wide eyes. Searching and disbelieving.
"Yes, Ilvëa." A smile crept across my face, unbidden. "It's really me."
"You've changed so much! You look… different." She tilted her head, studying me. "More seasoned. Harder, maybe."
"So have you."
And she had. The Ilvëa I remembered had been all sharp angles and restless energy, a girl who couldn't sit still for a full song. The woman on the branch above me carried herself with a quiet steadiness that spoke of long years and earned confidence.
My gaze drifted, briefly and entirely of its own accord, to certain other changes time had brought about.
A beat of silence.
Ilvëa's eyebrow arched.
I redirected my eyes to a nearby tree. Very interesting bark. Excellent tree. The grain pattern alone could occupy a craftsman for hours.
"I'm coming down!" echoed through the branches, mercifully ending the moment.
A few heartbeats later she landed lightly on the forest floor, and we fell into step together. My guard spread out to a respectful distance.
Neither of us seemed to know what to say next. Centuries of separation, and now the silence between us felt almost louder than the forest.
I reached into the collar of my tunic and pulled out a leather cord. On it hung a single acorn, darkened and smooth from years against skin.
Ilvëa stopped walking.
"You kept it," she said quietly.
"You told me to plant it somewhere worth staying." I turned the acorn between my fingers. "I haven't found the place yet."
She smiled. Then, without a word, she pushed back her sleeve.
A bracelet of silver hair wound around her wrist, glowing faintly with inner light. My hair. My Light. The same as the ones I'd made for my family before the Sundering.
My breath caught.
"You kept it too," I said.
"Fifty years." She touched the bracelet with her other hand, gently, the way you touch something sacred. "It never dimmed. Not once. Even in the darkest nights on the Journey, when I was alone and frightened and wondering if I'd made the worst mistake of my life, it was warm against my skin."
Something tightened in my chest that I couldn't blame on the walk.
"Maybe you have now," she said softly. "Found the place worth staying."
Then she pulled her sleeve back down, turned, and kept walking.
I followed, the acorn warm against my chest where I'd tucked it back. And on her wrist, hidden beneath fabric but still glowing, a piece of me she'd carried across the world.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
"…met Denethor and his father Lenwë in Rhovanion," I was saying as we walked. Ilvëa listened intently, asking questions in Quendian as clear and effortless as I remembered.
"And the others? Our old friends who stayed?"
"Celestia is with us," I said. "Mireth too. Eol as well." I paused. "They're all at the camp on the forest's edge. By the way, our passionate and gloomy Tatyar earned himself a nickname. The Forge-Wasp."
A small laugh escaped her. "That suits him far too well. Do you remember when he burned his eyebrows off trying to smelt copper in that pit he dug by the lake? And then walked around for a week pretending nothing had happened, daring anyone to comment?"
"No one dared."
"Celestia did."
"Of course she did."
Ilvëa laughed. I caught myself staring. She was beautiful when she laughed. How I'd missed that sound.
"But I'm more interested in how you ended up here. I was certain every Vanyar was in Aman by now."
My guard moved at a careful distance behind us, hands never far from weapons, eyes scanning the forest in every direction. Ready to throw themselves between their Chief and danger at a heartbeat's notice.
Ilvëa took a deep breath and seemed to sink into memory.
"Yes, all the Vanyar crossed into Aman. All except me." She sighed. "You know I never wanted to go on the Journey. But my parents' wishes won out over what I felt. What I wanted."
She turned her face slightly away. Her voice dropped.
"It was very hard to leave our friends. And… you."
Something warm stirred in my chest. I said nothing. Let the silence hold.
After a long moment, she continued.
"Then word reached us that before the great river and the mountains we'd already passed with the Noldor, a part of the Teleri at the very end of the column had broken away and refused to go further. That's when I finally found my courage." Her jaw set with a determination I recognized from decades ago. "Especially since many Quendi were terrified of the Belegaer. The Great Sea."
She gathered her thoughts.
"When the Vala Ulmo, Lord of all Waters and Seas, came to the shore and brought an island to carry the Vanyar and the Noldor across, I said my farewells to my parents. They were against it. Furious, actually. But I'd made my choice."
We settled on the massive roots of one of the great trees.
My guards drifted away in ones and twos, melting into the undergrowth. But I could still feel them out there, spaced wide, watching every approach.
Only when the last of them had vanished from sight did Ilvëa draw a breath and pick up the thread of her story.
"After some time I found the Teleri who had reached Beleriand. They'd arrived too late for Ulmo's island, but on the shore they'd befriended two of his servants. Maiar." She said the word carefully, as if tasting it. "Ossë, lord of storms and seas, and his wife Uinen, lady of the ocean depths and all things that live beneath the waves."
I filed that away. Not all the divine powers agreed with the Valar's relocation plan, it seemed. Interesting.
"But the Teleri had also lost their leader. Your brother Elwë had vanished."
My stomach tightened. I'd expected this, but hearing it spoken aloud by someone who'd been there made it real in a way my foreknowledge never had.
"One group of Teleri went searching for him, led by Elmo. The rest chose your other brother Olwë as their king. But…" She hesitated. "Olwë's Teleri didn't wait for the searchers to return. When the Valar came for them, they sailed to Aman. Elwë's people and Elmo's were left behind."
She paused, letting the weight of that settle.
"The Valar never came back for them."
Of course they didn't.
"The Teleri who remained settled across Beleriand. They call themselves the Eglath now. The Forsaken People." A bitter name, but an honest one. "Eventually Elwë was found. He goes by Elu Thingol now. Elwë Greycloak. And he married a Maia. Melian, the Precious Gift."
"A Maia," I repeated.
"They say it was fate. A doom that seized them both for all those years of his disappearance." Ilvëa's expression suggested she found this explanation somewhat lacking. "In any case, the Eglath proclaimed Elu Thingol king of all the Eldar in Beleriand and founded their realm. They call it Eglador. The Land of the Forsaken."
So the Sindar had already formed their kingdom, even if they hadn't earned that name yet. No Girdle of Melian around Doriath, not yet. The timeline still held.
Which meant we still had time.
"Círdan took his people to the coast," Ilvëa continued. "He recognized Thingol as High King but remained their own lord. The Falathrim, they're called. People of the Foaming Shore. They've built harbors at Eglarest and Brithombar. Beautiful ships. Ossë and Uinen taught them the craft."
"Wait." I held up a hand. "Círdan?"
"Oh! That's Novë's new name. Círdan the Shipwright."
Novë. Our Novë. The kid who used to carve little pine boats on the lakeshore at Cuiviénen, who'd raced me through the forest and lost because he tripped over a root.
Building real ships now. In real harbors.
I laughed. Genuinely laughed.
"Of course he builds ships. Of course."
Ilvëa smiled at that, but pressed on. She was clearly enjoying the role of storyteller.
"Many Teleri migrated north and settled in Hithlum. The Mist-land. They're called the Mithrim now, the Grey People, after the cold, gray region they chose. There's a great lake there and a river that flows through the Ered Wethrin and empties into the Sirion. That's how the Mithrim keep contact with the Eglath and the Falathrim. They travel the length of Beleriand by water."
I asked a few more pointed questions. Locations. Numbers. Relations between the groups. Ilvëa answered what she could.
Then it was my turn.
"After the Departure, we lived at the Lake in peace for a long time. Then the creatures of darkness Oromë had warned us about appeared. Orcs."
I kept my voice level. Matter-of-fact.
"We fought them when they came. Drove them off more than once. But they never stopped coming. There were always more of them. In the end, it became clear that numbers alone would crush us, sooner or later."
The memories pressed in, and I let them come and go without lingering.
"We chose to follow the path west. Our own Great March. And here we are." I spread my hands. "Our friends would be glad to see you. Come to our camp."
Ilvëa thought it over for a moment, then nodded.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
Her arrival caused a stir.
A golden-haired Vanyar walking out of the forest alongside the Chief was not something anyone had anticipated. Curious stares followed us through the camp. Whispers spread faster than we walked.
But those who recognized her, the old guard who remembered Cuiviénen and the faces of childhood, they reacted differently.
Celestia saw her first. Stopped mid-sentence, mouth open. Then crossed the distance in three long strides and pulled Ilvëa into an embrace that made the Vanyar squeak.
Eol's reaction was more restrained. A curt nod and ghost of a smile. Then back to whatever piece of metal he was torturing.
The others swarmed her within minutes, pulling her away in a tide of questions—half in Avarin, half in Quendian, all of it tangled with laughter and exclamations that needed no translation.
Ilvëa didn't speak Avarin. But Quendian was still Quendian, even after twenty years and a thousand new words, and between that shared tongue, we could make ourselves understood.
I watched them go, then turned to my duties. The camp wouldn't organize itself.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[End of Chapter 10.1]