The road joins up to other roads twice, becoming broader and brighter each time. They pass and are passed by a few other travellers going in either direction, all of them better at roads than Korafen and Ikrifiss.

Then, as the sun is starting to dip low enough that its beams don't reach through the canopy, they come to the end of the road. Its glow dims gradually over the last stretch, until it's just a normal - well, locally normal - forest path again. Just past the point where the glow fades completely, an archway spans the path, made of one tree on each side that lean gracefully together to join into a single trunk twenty feet in the air over the middle of the ex-road. Beyond that is an open space floored with springy green moss.

"Welcome to the Tree!" says Sunpatch, swishing his tail happily. "D'you want to find somewhere to stay? Something to eat or drink?"

"Definitely all three of those things."

"Which one first?"

"Food or beverage, definitely."

"Okay!"

He leads them along the street. All the buildings seem to be made of living plants, with bark-covered wooden walls hosting climbing vines whose brightly coloured flowers unfurl and begin to glow as the light dims. The moss underfoot glows faintly in the dark too. Through the leafy canopy of this section of the city, they catch occasional glimpses of a vast towering trunk, its curve so broad you could almost mistake it for a flat wall. It, too, is adorned with glowing flowers; they twine along the railings of walkways formed from living wood. People are out and about on the streets and walkways - primarily pointy-eared humanoids, but also some glowing humanoids with insectlike wings.

After a few minutes, they turn onto the latest of several mossy streets and find the trunk of the Tree looming at the far end: huge and craggy and brown, with roots each as thick as a small building. Where it intersects the street, there is a living wooden gate, currently standing open, and a pair of walkways that climb away from the street and up around the trunk to either side.

Sunpatch thinks to ask, "...How do you feel about heights?"

"I'm fine with them."

"Might get a little nervous but nothing worth seriously worrying about."

"Okay, good. The place I'm thinking of is a few levels up, and I'd have to find somewhere else if you didn't want to go up," Sunpatch explains. "Let's go up the outside, it's always less crowded."

Indeed, there's only a handful of people going up and down the walkways. Sunpatch traipses up the one on the right; it's nearly as wide as the street, and carpeted in the same faintly glowing moss. Anyone who was nervous of heights could just stick close to the trunk and hardly think about it.

That's fine, then.

When they have been going up for a while, the walkway flattens out for a stretch and there is another gate in the middle. This one is closed when they get there, but opens creakily when Sunpatch prods it with the tip of his horn, and he proceeds inside.

From this vantage, it is finally evident just how big around the Tree is. They can stand just inside the gate and look down on the lowest section of the city, living wooden buildings spreading their eager leaves under a vaulted wooden 'sky' that glows with green-gold light. Here and there, gaps in that ceiling show glimpses of the levels above. The whole thing is easily the size of a medium-sized town or small city, but if it's proportioned anything like a normal tree, it's got to be much, much taller.

Beautiful.

Impressively well-designed.

"Welcome to the Tree!" says Sunpatch happily, and he leads them a short distance around the inside of the trunk to a building that seems to be rooted in the walkway itself. When he steps inside, the proprietor waves: it's some kind of bar or restaurant or combination thereof.

"Hi! I brought hungry elf-kin!" says Sunpatch.

"My favourite!" says the blue-haired leaf-winged child-sized humanoid behind the counter. "What would you like to eat, friends?"

"...We're from very far away. I don't know if there's any overlap in cuisine."

"Well, then, try a few things," she says.

"This is Lastlight, she's a fae," explains Sunpatch belatedly. "These are Korafen and Ikrifiss and I'm pretty sure they're humans!"

Lastlight smiles welcomingly and hands Korafen and Ikrifiss each a little round baked good of some kind.

They both agree that it is tasty.

"Good! Then maybe you'll like this - "

Lastlight has many foods, and she's a remarkably good guesser about which of these foods will be pleasant to eat. There are also beverages, which mostly seem to be various mixes and dilutions of fruit or vegetable juice, and of course plain water is an option. (Sunpatch taps a faucet with his horn.)