"How can I become more like you?" she asks the giant owl who has taken to perching on the old pine next to her family's nest.

Feather doesn't think it's strange to talk to owls. Sometimes a bear will warn her off a path as she learns to walk the forest by herself; sometimes a tree will grow a face and spend an hour teaching her about ethics, or explaining how rainwater penetrates the earth. Owls are very wise; she suspects they can all talk, they're just hiding it.

The giant bird, five times taller than Feather even with its wings folded, regards her impassively. "Why?" it hoots eventually.

(This is one of a few hundred Sylvan words for which there are agreed approximations for races whose mouths cannot truly speak the language; a limited pidgin invented perhaps for young druids who had not yet learned to speak in every shape, but one that spread to all intelligent species of the forest long before recorded history. An owl's 'who' does not sound at all like a bear's, but the sounds bear the same internal relation, so you can understand it if you know what sounds owls make.)

(Feather has been a very diligent student for her age.)

"Because I want to fly," she explains. "And you're very beautiful, and, and - majestic, and I bet flying silently like an owl is the best kind of flying there is, to really see all of the forest."

The owl regards her, unblinkingly.

"...and owls are very wise," Feather adds after a delay.

"Why wise?" the owl wants to know.

This stumps her for a few moments. Doesn't everyone want to become very wise? "Because wisdom is - knowing and doing all the right things?" she hazards. "I want to, to be the best I can. The best - everything. And if I can't be the best at everything, then if I'm wise I can still tell what to do."

The owl spreads its great wings, blotting out the morning sun in its shadow, glides down in gentle circles until it settles in front of Feather, and bends down to look at her consideringly, with an eye as big as her head.

She is suddenly, terrifyingly aware that owls are predators, and she is just right size for a snap of its beak. And she has been told (and told and told) not to go near predators she hasn't been introduced to. But her parents know this owl perches here in the mornings, and  it doesn't feel dangerous, it feels like anything but that - 

And it is so, so beautiful. Up close, every little barbule shining with the morning dew, its eyes the piercing yellow she wishes her hair was, she is suddenly overwhelmed by sheer longing. She wants to hug it, to make herself a nest in its soft feathers and vanish into its soft warm embrace, protected by its pinions and talons from every storm and predator. She's been taught not to (because it's 'impolite') but sometimes she feels she just wants to hug the whole world and all the stupid rules are in her way.

The owl considers her for long minutes while she practically vibrates in place. And then it bends further down, plucks out one of the smallest feathers on its belly (almost as long as her forearm), and gently tucks it into her hair.

"Wait wise," the owl tells her, before it flies back into its tree and settles down for its daily sleep.

When her parents find her, she is clutching the feather and crying and can barely explain what happened. They tell her to keep it safe (as if she was ever going to let go of it whatever anyone said). They tell her it's an honour.

Feather isn't sure what honour is, but she knows a promise when she sees one.

When the owl's chicks hatch a few months later, she spends as much time as she can next to their nest. She learns to climb trees better than any of the other children; she brings them mice when she can catch them (her father stops her once they graduate to dire rats).  She helps clean their bedding, talks to them as they learn Sylvan, mourns with them when one is taken by a venomous snake while their mother's away hunting. She tries her best to see the world through their eyes, even as they grow up at five times her speed and to five times her size.

One day she will grow up to be wise just like them, wise enough to soar silently over the night-time forest.

"No," the great owl flies in to tell them as they collect deadwood one day. Its eyes are tiny slits against the noon sun. "Danger."

Her mother nods and makes to go back, but Feather lingers. "Why?" she wants to know. 

The owl regards her with what she now thinks is sadness. And then there are human-sounding screams in the distance, very many of them, and her mother firmly grasps her hand and makes her run all the way back home.

"What was that?!" Feather demands, out of breath. "Is that the adults' place?" There are always some adults with the children but most of them leave for a few days at a time, somewhere the children are not allowed to go or to know about.

"It is the war," her mother says eventually.

"I don't know that word," Feather says.

Her mother hugs her. "I think it is time you learned."

Feather is older now. She lives with a group of older children and young adolescents (it is hard to generalize over species), from her own community and others, and only sees her parents at night. Her owl-feather is lovingly enshrined at home, pressed between two smooth planks of wood and only taken out in her weekly meditation classes.

They are taught, by some of the people she knows already and by many others; and there is so, so much to learn.

The world is vast far beyond her experience, she is told. It is far, far bigger than the Forest. And while there are other Forests out there, most of the world is not like that. Most of the world is filled with humans and other humanoids who hate the forests, and want to cut them down and burn the ground and leave only grass where trees had grown.

The outsiders - some people call them 'the humans', though Varren the teacher punishes anyone he catches doing it - are hard to understand. They have strange desires; and that is a very troubling verdict, coming from a druid who has spent centuries understanding every kind of creature in the Forest. They live miserable lives, and spend most of them hurting themselves and everyone around them. They master great arts of wizardry, but they can't understand or accept some of the simplest truths in the world. They can't explain themselves; and on the rare occasions one of them comes to understand the Forest, they invariably join it and are better off for it, but they still can't explain either side to the other.

The outsiders can be pitied; in other Forests they are even helped occasionally, to grow more plants or to have healthier children; but they must be fought. The Forest is surrounded by a vast battleground, and one day they will have to go out and do their duty: to fight to protect others, so the life they have known can continue.

Feather doesn't understand how a people can exist that can't be understood. Or, well, she knows what it's like not to understand something, but - if lots of people from each side, the very wisest ones, sat together and explained themselves, and took however many years or decades they had to, how could they still not understand each other? They're all people!

"They don't think we're people," Varren tells her eventually. "That's the real difference. They think they are the only real people, and Good and Evil only apply to them, and everything else is - just like a rock. 'Not a moral patient', as teacher Oak would say."

This stumps Feather for a while. She can understand not caring about some people, many creatures are like that. But how can you think they're not people? Isn't that just objective fact, and an obvious one at that? And - supposing someone, somehow, didn't think she was people, how could she possibly go about convincing them otherwise?

"So they want to kill us all, because they don't think we matter?" she asks eventually. "To them, we're just... unused space?"

Varren nods. "And a resource. They don't see a difference between lumber or stone for building. They force animals to work for them just like they force each other, with cruel beatings, but they call themselves Lawful while thinking Law applies to beating humans and not anyone else."

"That much could be excused; it might be Evil, but many people are Evil. But they breed and consume without limit, and if we didn't stop them, a century from now there would be no trees left to kill for lumber, and they don't care."

"Can't it be just... emergent behaviour?" Feather hazards. "Each of them only tries to have lots of grandchildren, and build houses for all of them out of wood, and none of them wants there to be no more forest, but anyone who cares for the future and limits themselves is just - outbred by those who do it anyway?"

"They're much wiser in other matters," Varren says disapprovingly - of the outsiders, obviously, not of his best student, so eager to learn and to understand everything she sees. "But you're not entirely wrong. They're like a race that has no natural predators, with everyone fighting for their own territory, expanding until something stops them."

Something is wrong with this picture. "Isn't that unstable? I mean... It sounds like a toy example for teaching children, not like a real ecosystem. One race, or a few that live together I guess, with no predators, growing its own food, expanding and consuming everything in their path until they cover the world? But they don't cover the world, obviously, and - it can't be that simple, that situation isn't going to last, there's nothing to balance it. Or so I've been taught," she adds a little sheepishly.

"We're the balance," Varren says. "We protect the forests, and stop the outsiders from expanding."

"Where did they come from?" Feather wants to know. "If they always expand until we stop them, did there use to be a lot less of them? If there was, why didn't we stop them then? And it there wasn't, and we've always balanced them, then are they really constantly expanding?" Well, she supposes it's enough to see it happen in lots of little incidents to extrapolate to the whole world being overrun, but - she doesn't feel like she really understands this lesson. She feels there's something missing still, some big piece of Wisdom that would make everything she's heard snap together and make sense.

Varren sighs and leans back. "How is your little owl friend doing?" he asks.

That's unfair, changing subjects like that when he's supposed to be teaching her, but it will totally work because Feather is constitutionally unable to stop telling everyone about Greystripe the Owlet's latest achievements for as long as they'll listen.

"He's almost up to flying!" she announces happily. "He's been practicing flapping all night after I told him I will not put him back again if he glides out and can't fly back up. I think his mom thinks I'm overprotective by now but" - she lowers her voice conspirationally - "have you seen him? It's not possible to be overprotective of someone so cute! He's going to be the cutest hunter in the forest when he's grown up all big - well, Small, but you know what I mean - and, and he's going to come to all my lessons, and sit on my shoulder." She knows little owls aren't nearly as cunning or Wise as the huge ones, obviously, but listening to people speak Sylvan all day has got to help a little.

"He'll just sleep all day," Varren points out amusedly. "Are you sure it'll be good for him, having to sleep while people are talking and you're walking around?"

"I'll know if it's bad for him," Feather says with absolute confidence. "And I'll stop. But I don't think it has to be bad. Everyone has the potential for change and growth in them, right?"

That earns her a rare smile. "I believe in you," Varren declares. "Once Greystripe is settled to his new routine, go see teacher Ferran. Tell him I said you and Greystripe are ready for the World History class."

She grows, and she learns. 

Rivers and unicorns, willows and morningsharks, shingles and nightshades, sex and childbirth and death, they all merge into a dazzling whirlwind of knowledge that she thirstily soaks up. Sometimes she despairs of ever learning it all. There are not enough days in the week, not enough weeks in the decade. She has to learn it all and organize it all and comprehend it all and achieve Wisdom, and she has to do it quickly. 

She is tall enough now to carry the feather on her always, preserved in tree resin that her uncle made hard and clear almost like amber, hung on a string around her neck. It is her meditation-focus and her guiding light as she forces herself to keep studying, twelve and more hours every day even as her parents and teachers beg her to let up, Greystripe her only steadfast companion as she stalks around relentlessly hounding the teachers for more lessons.

She knows, now, that her world is dying.

In the beginning, there was the World Forest.

Many things were different in those days. It is wrong to pretend that there was peace and balance and harmony until the humans came. There was change, fighting, misery, death. But through it all, the forest endured, new life replacing the old, new races springing in the place of those gone extinct, deserts shrinking as often as they grew. 

History, at least the history kept by druids, does not stretch back much longer than what is told elsewhere on Golarion. Humans may have always existed, or they may have been a later import. Those were the ages when the legendary xiomorns walked the land, when races and whole kinds might appear in the records one day as if made out of whole cloth. At any rate, the humans used to be of little consequence...

Until the alghollthus came.

The alghollthus did not care for the existence of that which they could not enslave. They shaped the humans in their own image and gave them the power to dominate the land as they dominated the deep seas. They drove out the xiomorns, and frightened the races who might have contested the humans' advance - dragons, giants, fey, various outsiders - frightened them into letting the humans spread unchecked, burning and pillaging as they went.

It is said that the druids of the time, aghast at the rapid destruction wrought by the humans, convened great councils and assembled grand alliances to oppose them. This may be myth, the product of wishful thinking; the humans don't seem to have ever slowed down. They took over one continent and a good chunk of the next, and even began to spread to the Moon. With the wisdom of hindsight, seeing today's shrunken forests struggle to hold back one-tenth of the humans' old strength, one might think the outcome had been inevitable -

Until Earthfall nearly killed them all.

No-one today comprehends Earthfall as intimately as the druids did. The humans scrambled to save themselves - their knowledge, their culture - some of them considered even the possibility their race might grow extinct - (a single race! to them it was the only thing in the world that mattered -)

Only the druids knew then, and remember now, just how terrifyingly close they all came to the extinction of all surface life on Golarion, and the Alghollthus getting what they wished for.

The druids fought to protect everyone. They taught animals to hibernate, seeds to lie dormant for centuries. They sent survivors to the Darklands where there was food and safety, they fought to buy them that safety, they brought forth other kinds that could flourish in the darkness. Cleaned ash-choked rivers, watered the burned remains of continent-spanning forests so new shoots might grow, slowly, ever so slowly in the dim light. Used their hoarded magic so a few might live while many died, bargained and bartered desperately with Nirvana's budget to shelter scions of a thousand thousand races, desperately hoping against hope that a day might come again when they could live on the surface of their beloved world, that day would ever come again. Triaging, hoarding, feeding their life's work and their life's blood to the fire one soul at a time, to keep the fire from dying out completely. 

Some brilliant souls invented arcane botany in Arcadia, during the Age of Darkness. They are venerated by the humans who live there today as paragons of their kind; archmages one and all, the human epitome. 

The druids know better, of course. The Arcadians stumbled on a source of power; the knowledge of botany existed long before them. But they venerate those heroes of old all the same for cooperating, coming together to work in the service of life where every other human civilization had worked against it.

When dim day dawned on Golarion for the first time in an age, a forest stood defiant on every remaining continent to see it. Poor, bare, leafless, half-dead, a shrunken shadow of its former glory everywhere but a small part of Arcadia - but they had survived. 

And for next five thousand years, they had dared to hope.

There was so much work, in those days. They brought their world back to life when it was nine-tenth dead, they grew and spread and reintroduced and stabilized and desperately staved off a myriad different crises, and somehow - miraculously - it all worked. Life thrived again; different than before in almost every aspect, but none the worse for it.

Oh, some other things happened at the time. The orcs and the dwarves came to the surface, the elves came back. The genies and elementals built Osirion, Zon-Kuthon built Nidal, Nex and Geb had their little spat. Spawn of Rovagug and rogue demigods wandered the countryside and were slain by gods or adventurers and came back to life and were slain again. A necromancer or three tried to conquer the world and was beaten back.

Weighty events, certainly. Countries rising and falling, millions of square miles greening and dying and greening again, the fate of trillions of spirits in the balance.

None of it mattered at all. They were greening the planet, the small patches of it that were on fire could be fixed later. Sure, a few reactionary voices still wanted to wipe out all the humans as a preventive measure, but the alghollthus were dormant (and noone wanted to poke them) and without them, the humans and their wizards had seemed, for a while, to be on side. Not actively helping, most of them, but no longer running unchecked, and there was so much land still barren, who cared if they settled some of it? Anyway, Aroden had surely learned some restraint and was mostly doing fine these days, and he was friends with Arazni and she had a good head on her shoulders.

Until Aroden ascended, and stabbed them all in the back.

For Aroden proclaimed himself God of Humanity, and He told the humans of Golarion: go forth, and conquer in My name. Take all the lands for your own, and take the humans who do not worship Me; take the animals and the plants, the fish of the sea and the birds of the air: for I give you dominion over them.

You have a civilizing mission, He said; a mission to promote human flourishing. For humans to flourish, all else must be subjugated; and what is useless must die, to make room for more humans.

Rape the earth and plunder its bones, burn the forests for charcoal and clear the land for pasture. Kill everything you do not eat, and kill everything that eats what you do. Grow ever in knowledge, for knowledge is power, until your towers stretch up to the stars and humans teem in their billions and none of them are ever sick or hungry or afraid, for all that is left of life on Golarion will be their for the eating, and nothing will be left in the world to frighten them or sicken them. Nothing but other humans, and those few humanoid races they permit to exist in their midst.

That, said Aroden, is the destiny and future of humankind; that is the world you will build in My name. And he found many hands willing to His call.

Every druid alive today (says Feather's teacher) blames those who lived then for not realizing the threat, and not acting swiftly when something might yet be done. Would you not kill most or even all humans, if it saved all other life on the planet? When the humans had been central to the greatest catastrophe in history, and appeared to have learned nothing from it? When the very god leading them was the one who had led the Azlanti to their downfall?

Whatever the reasons (and there were many), the druids did not band together; they did not lead the forests to kill all the humans with their still-primitive, by modern standards, technology. They kept growing the forests, healing, repairing, protecting. 

Until, century by century, their work began to slow. Until they came to realize it was not because the work was approaching its end. Slowly, ever so slowly -

The forests started to shrink again, and they have never stopped since.

Some among the druids name Absalom Reckoning the Age of the Long Defeat. Five thousand years of forests shrinking, people dying, whole ecosystems lost, their great work half undone.

It is most nearly undone on Avistan, where Aroden founded His empire. Avistan, now squeezed between the Worldwound and Nidal and Infernal Cheliax. Avistan, where a nation that calls itself Good hosts the worst dedicated group of forest-killers on the planet.

Avistan, where the remnants of Ravounel Forest fight on for their life, teeth bared against all comers.

Far to the east of Ravounel, on the other side of the continent, stands the Verduran Forest. Ancient and beautiful, verdant in spring and bountiful in autumn. Beset by humans on all sides like all great forests, it has been shrinking for millenia.

Centuries ago, the druids of the Verduran realized they could not win the long war. Centuries ago, they decided that they did not wish to fight it forever, presiding over their own descendants' demise as their realm grew ever smaller, death by inevitable death.

And so they went to the humans, and in their desperation they struck a terrible bargain.

There are groves now in the Verduran that are grown and tended by gnomes who fell them in their prime, as soon as the saplings gain enough girth. Grown and harvested, grown and harvested, over and over forever, the bodies given to the humans to build their ships. 

There is peace now, in the eastern Verduran, and it has held for centuries. The druids enforce the peace, keeping the gnomes' groves safe from the rest of the forest. Keeping the anger of the forest from overwhelming the loggers, as they stand on the other side of the line that druids have stood behind for ages uncounted.

But not everyone in the Verduran was willing to be complicit. Not everyone was willing to build Awaiting Consumption in miniature, growing life only to reap it, young and healthy and with no chance of escape, no children or friends left to mourn those sacrificed to the endless pit of human greed. 

And so the dissenters left, druids and treants, owls and wolves, strixes and unicorns and dryads with their unawakened trees painstakingly liveoaked mile after mile, creatures of every race and description united by their belief in the Great Project and their stubborn refusal to compromise on their principles or to admit defeat.

They made the trek across the continent to the Ravounel. And with their added strength, and their newfound desperation, the forest was fortified; cut off from the lands around it and turned hostile to all outsiders, more than any other in southern Avistan.

And they succeeded. In four centuries, Ravounel Forest has not ceded ground; they even clawed some back, during the humans' internecine wars when Aroden miraculously died. For four centuries their walls have stood, the enemy ever at the gates.

These are your people to defend; your heritage to live up to. This is where you live; this is where you have always lived.

Welcome to the grown-up world, Bright Morning Feather. We're sorry it's in such a state. But we're very happy, that you're here with us now.

Feather grows, and learns, and searches.

She loves her teachers and her elders. She trusts them, the long wisdom of generations of druids who came before her. She desperately fears they are right; she desperately wants to prove them wrong.

Feather doesn't want to be at war with the whole world.

She doesn't know what she's searching for. A solution, an answer, a proof, a miracle? She doesn't know what she's doing, scrabbling around in the dark for some clue, a way out of this eternal trap, a better end to the story -

She's not going to give up. She'll fight if she has to. And until she has to, she'll fight to find a better way.

She trains with Greystripe until she can talk to him, talk like him, think like him, until she looks and moves and flies and hunts just like him, for hours at a time. She is taught to cast spells and the Druidic language, and initiated into the lesser mysteries.

Feather is a full druid now, with power and with great responsibility towards all life. There is a celebration, family and friends and age-mates and teachers and senior druids exchanging gifts and congratulations and well-wishes and promises for the coming year, all swirling around her until she feels like the whole great Forest has come together in a triumphant song that fills her with love to the bursting point.

Some other forests would have her take flight the next day, leaving the nest and exploring the world around her, flying until she feels the longing that calls her home. Ravounel Forest sends her to the front lines of the war.

The war-zone occupies a full third of the Forest's area. Sinkholes and vines, ambushes and traps, dangerous creatures over-bred and fed and kept from turning on each other, layer upon layer of poison and claw arrayed against any who walk in. Giant trees blocking the sky, flying creatures of every description, detection and warding and quick response teams, a giant canopy raised to protect the Forest's peaceful center where children play against enemies who fly or teleport in. A whole section cordoned off and claimed by hags, and other sections designed to funnel outsiders towards them. Every creature of the forest with cunning and wisdom enough to know the score takes a part in the defense of the Forest. They must all stand together, or else perish together.

And moving through it all, unseen and unheard unless they want to be, directing everything, responding to every crisis and false alarm, are the druids.

Feather learns to travel safely when she cannot fly, through the war-zone where no safe trails are marked, on two legs and on four, along the ground and at every height above it. She learns the call-signs, when to run towards or away, who to call for help and who will call on her for help in need. She meets the captains of the guard and studies plants and creatures she has only heard of in class. She moves clockwise around the Forest as a year passes, learning just barely enough to let every part of it call on her in an emergency, so she can fight anywhere she has to and do more good than harm.

She helps separate guardian-creatures when they fight each other; the near-overcrowding is not good for them, but they are needed to repel intruders, and she tries to calm them and help them as best she can, all the while half-expecting to hear the bird-call telling her to send them on the attack instead. She spies on humans from the Outside who enter the forest's outskirts, the few miles of depth before the fortified zone that are kept clear because the druids cannot afford to expose themselves, makes sure they only gather deadwood or hunt, tracks one who has taken to sleeping inside the Forest to make sure he is up to no mischief. She flies out on patrols to spot anyone approaching.

Twice, she helps kill humans who have brought axes into the Forest when they ran out of deadwood in winter. Once, she shadows a group of humans on horses who hunt deer with bows, more and more of the forests' defenders streaming in unseen to a potential fight, until it is clear that they are leaving one of the dead deer behind uneaten and the forest descends on them in a furious cloud of feathers and darkness and when it rises again they are no more and the forest exhales.

One of them was a wizard; some of the others were skilled fighters. There are birds who will not fly again, cubs left without a father. A manticore has lost a leg and must be bidden farewell; a wide strip of trees and bushes and myriad small plants and vermin, burned beyond recovery.

It is a quiet year in the war.

In the second year of her druidship, she accompanies an older druid on a circuit of the human villages nearest the Forest. It is her first time talking to the Outsiders.

The druids of Ravounel Forest don't visit the Outsider villages and towns nearly as much as the druids of Barrowood or the other forests, but they do sometimes venture out. They give different reasons: gathering intelligence, helping people when no-one's looking, just being tired of the eternal war.

Feather's reason is simple. She has to end the war, either in victory or in peace, and to do so she needs to understand these humans. Not merely to learn their plans, and not just to 'know thy enemy' as it applies to war; to truly understand them the way a druid understands creatures, until she can walk and talk and think they way they do, until she can hold their alien mindset in her head at the same time as her own to arrive at some kind of synthesis.

Maybe that's heresy; maybe she'll Fall trying to do that. But she is a druid; she only has one fundamental approach to the universe. She needs to understand them, if she is to do more than kill and kill and kill and eventually die, and that means learning to become them.

Even learning their language proves to be a challenge. Memorizing the words and the rules is easy; navigating the concepts, the assumptions built into it, is decidedly not. Why are all snakes said to be female? Why are houses? Why is north to your left and south to your right? Why is it respectful to call one many? What does it mean to be pathetic?

But Feather never expected understanding the Outsiders to be easy. And so, once she can make herself understood, she begins accompanying third-circle druid Pravo on his visits to nearby villages, and even a few bigger towns.

One of them flies in to check if powerful or important-looking people are present. The clerics of Asmodeus wear distinctive robes, like bright-coloured snakes, so they can be avoided. They visit the ordinary people: the humans in their houses built from stones and dead wood, the captive animals in their pastures and pens and the fruit-trees in the human-planted groves, the local trees and birds and bees and rabbits who have learned to live as best they can alongside the despoilers. They offer castings of healing spells and plant growth and speak with animals and speak with plants, the basic stuff of everyday life. In return they accept news, a wide variety of coins and items of dubious usefulness, and - in Feather's case - their life-stories, or at least some stories, some string she can pull on to start unravelling the mysteries of their daily existence.

It quickly becomes clear that the Outsiders hate talking to Feather when she asks them questions.

Sometimes they run away to call the Asmodean clerics, or just run away. Sometimes they refuse to answer, but also refuse to say that they don't want to answer. Sometimes they freeze like mice caught by a cat, like talking to her makes them want to plead for their very lives except they know there is no pleading in front of a predator.

(Sometimes they make up nonsense, tell lies to make her go away. She can usually tell those, but she can't always be sure; learning means accepting the novel and the counterintuitive.)

Sometimes they are wounded, and when she offers to heal them they don't always accept, or they accept but want to keep the healing secret from others. Feather eventually learns that these are wounds they inflict on each other, that one member of a community wants another to stay wounded, to hurt, in a dominance display that must be ridiculously counterproductive, she'd heard these people starve to death in bad winters, they can't afford unnecessary injuries or illness -

The humans treat their animals no better than each other. They hurt them constantly; they would get more work out of them if they hurt them less, except they can't talk to them and don't seem to be interested in learning. Feather almost decides they're all irrevocably stupid, except that stupid people couldn't beat back the Forest. Maybe the villagers are just different from the humans in the cities and the armies and the adventurer parties, the ones who actually pose a threat.

But she still wants to learn, and so she patiently teases what stories she can out of them, and teases the stories apart into strands of meaning. Why can't these two marry without pretending at least one of them hates the idea? Why does a man whip a halfling slave and then complain when the slave is too ill to work? Why is a child's toy tied to the willow? Why is the cow-herd the size that it is when the pasture can support more? How are nobles different from commoners, do they think they're a different race? Why can't anyone admit they love their children?

"The hurting each other is new," Pravo tells her. "The Asmodeans make them do it a lot. Under Aroden they used to hurt everyone but the humans."

This is - gesturing towards an explanation; she can understand 'weird god motivations'. But why do the humans obey those gods? Is it really enough for a god to empower the small minority that wants to hurt others, and then have those clerics build an entire society around them? Aren't different gods supposed to always work at cross purposes to prevent that from happening?

Even if it's true, she still needs to understand how these people think today. It may take her a long time, it may take her whole life, but Feather sees no choice but to keep trying.

The years pass far too quickly. Bright Morning Feather is a woman grown now, and a druid of the third circle. She has no idea how the senior druids get anything done, there are not nearly enough days in the year. Sometimes she despairs of achieving real wisdom, even at the end of a long and busy lifetime.

She understands the Outsider-humans much better; not nearly well enough to pass as one, but enough to make her think she's finally grasping at the distant edges of how they think, how they see the world they move in. And if even half of what she thinks she knows is right, then she honestly sees no hope for them, and no hope for the Forest. They are, fundamentally, not people who can be reasoned or even negotiated with, except from a position of far superior strength.

She will make it her life's work to try, but she is increasingly pessimistic about her chances of success.

One day, word arrives of a war between the outsiders. Their chief city in ruins, their armies in disarray. New rulers installed, and new gods, and no-one they speak to seems to know what they want.

(If there is one thing druids are good at, it is recognizing when they do not understand something, and recognizing the same confusion in others. Everyone in Cheliax assumes things of the new government, but when druids see people they do not understand, they know.)

They debate whether to send messages to the new government, or a messenger, but the government is unlikely to be able to say anything to them that they could trust. Anyway, Barrowood is likely to do it first if anyone will. So they wait.

A few months later comes news of a 'constitutional convention'. (Feather is glad she learned the Taldane concept of a 'tongue-twister' (*) so she knows what to call - that thing.) No-one is quite sure what it's for, but it seems like an opportunity to meet many different (powerful) people, including some of the new rulers, hopefully under a promise of safe-passage. The druids deliberate again.

And a few days after that comes the really shocking news:

Bright Morning Feather has been chosen to attend, on behalf of Ravounel Forest, and learn what she can.

They ask her if she's willing. A silly question; this is the chance of a lifetime to advance her knowledge and understanding of the Outsiders far beyond what she could otherwise accomplish. Of course she's willing, she's eager.

All she has to do is not get herself killed, to make sure her dear-won wisdom can find its way home again. Home, to the Forest.

(*) Something that's literally harder to pronounce than to twist your tongue into a knot, which is a fun challenge for kids of some races.

Naima really needs to stop volunteering for things. In this case she was the only one who wanted the druids at the convention at all, and they really ought to be there, but still. Her poor children put up with so much neglect.

She teleports to the edge of the forest, reminds herself that nothing in the forest can plausibly hurt her anymore, and sets about talking to birds and agreeing to feed them if they will do a task for her. After some explanation, she has them canvassing the area for druids, which she doesn't especially expect them to recognize but may be able to recognize herself, as she looks through their eyes. Eventually - there.

She teleports again, bowing to the animal she's identified as plausibly a shape changed druid. She'd change shape herself, to signal something about her similarity, but she's trying to get pregnant again these days, and it wouldn't be worth the setback.

"Excuse me. I am Naima Cotonnet, here on behalf of the Chelish Constitutional Convention. The druids of Ravounel Forest are invited to send a representative to the convention, to speak on behalf of the druids and those in their care."

The random druid is appropriately startled and terrified! Luckily, he has heard about the convention and the plans to send a delegate, so he doesn't quite jump straight to "outsider wizard teleported on top of me! Go get reinforcements while I bravely hold her off at the cost of my life!"

Instead he's going to tell his companion to go get reinforcements tell druid Violet that there's an outsider wizard here, who says she's Archmage Cotonnet, yes that Cotonnet, and wants to officially invite the Forest's representative to the convention which is what they wanted to do all along! - while he bravely holds her off by politely serving tea and berries, hungry people are more prone to attack you, right.

...and then get reinforcements on the way back, obviously, because a wizard just teleported on top of a druid in the middle of the Forest's second defense line. In case she's just a teleporting wizard, and not an archmage after all.

Druids can move quickly in the forest when they have to; sometimes the teleporting wizards don't wait before throwing fireballs. Within a few minutes, a response force appropriate to a lone teleporting wizard has converged the general area. 

A little later, a large wolf enters the clearing. "I am Violet," she says. "Welcome to the Forest, Naima Cotonnet. Can you say more of what you and the other new human rulers intend towards us, and how the convention will affect this? I had thought the convention was to set laws for the Chelish humans."

"It is. Or, rather, it is to decide the shape of the new government - who will make laws, and how, and what they may make laws about. To my knowledge, the Queen has no particular intention of exerting more control over the forests than she does now, save perhaps to deal with the infernal incursion in the Whisperwood. But the Queen will not decide all government policy - the people will have a voice as well, and I won't know their intentions towards you until I hear them at the convention."

"I recognize that almost all interactions you have had with the outside world have been hostile, for many decades. But in other lands - better lands - there is discussion and trade, between the druids and those who farm cleared land. The old Chelish monarchs foolishly broke those ties of friendship. We invite you to the convention in an attempt to restore those lost ties, and because we believe that you deserve a voice in what policies the Chelish government ought to adopt."

That is about the best thing she could say! And also immensely suspicious, because how did she know to come here just a week after they decided to send someone to the convention hoping to hear what she just said? Did she spy on their meeting? Still, this is hardly a sufficient reason not to send Feather. And since she's not going to tell Naima (or "Naima") to leave, to avoid antagonizing her, she may as well act as if she believes her.

"I'm glad to hear it. Many in the forest hate all outsiders and will not forgive them for a long time, if ever. But if we can be left alone in peace, then I believe those of us who do wish for closer ties with the outside world will be free to establish them.

"However, we can't send someone who will speak on behalf of everyone in the Forest or make commitments. Because not everyone agrees, and because" - how to put this diplomatically - "we don't know you well enough to make an agreement we can trust, yet." And because anyone senior and powerful enough to halfway speak for the whole Forest can't leave it, because they might not come back - or worse.

"We will send someone to - talk to people, and tell them what we want and what we may offer in exchange. This may not be enough to sway the other people there. Do you have a better idea?"

(Two owls glide silently onto a branch, and settle to listen.)

She waves her hand. "We do not ask that you send someone capable of making binding agreements. We may wish to make such agreements later, but that's not what the convention is for. It places no obligations of any kind on you. We ask that you send someone who can speak as a member of the Chelish people, even if you do not normally think of yourselves as such, and help the Chelish people make decisions about how we should deal with you. Yours will be only one of many voices, and perhaps not enough to sway the others. Like the animals in the forest, the people of Cheliax do not all agree. But we wish to invite members of those groups with a stake in the outcome to help discuss it anyway, and that includes you."

"We will do that," Violet agrees. "We had already meant to send someone, hoping to - start talking, as you say. Have our voice heard. We are glad you brought an invitation," because it makes it much less likely Feather will be murdered out of hand.

Actually introducing them is a risk, because if this isn't Naima then she might be here to sabotage them for some factional outsider reason. They're ready to respond if she attacks, but once she knows who Feather is, she can track her down later. But Feather can hardly stay in hiding once she arrives in Westcrown, and a teleporting wizard can assassinate her there just as easily, so - it's a risk she's willing to take.

"This is Bright Morning Feather, our chosen delegate. She's young, but I hope that will help her - meet you without too many preconceptions, unlike someone who has spent half a lifetime fighting off intruders."

One of the owls blurs into a young woman; she drops from a crouch to sit more comfortably on her branch, and looks at Naima rather as if she were still an owl, with huge unblinking eyes trying to drink in every detail.

So this novel creature is an archmage?

You can become people by understanding them. You can understand people by studying them. If only she could study Naima for long enough - if only she could follow her and observe and talk to her for a few years -!

"Use your words, dear," Violet says, having a pretty good idea of where Feather's mind has gone, "you know humanoids take decades to really understand, and I'm guessing our guest doesn't have that much time."

(Humanoids take centuries to understand; only a few arch-druids have ever lived who managed it repeatedly. But Feather doesn't know that yet, because she doesn't know she can live for centuries. Besides, it's just as well to create an impression that more things are attainable for druids than is quite true, when talking in front of outsiders.)

"Hi I'm Feather will you answer a lot of questions for me because I really want to understand you in order to figure out how our people can make peace and not fight to the death anymore" - gasp - slow down a bit - "and also, understanding people is the way to Wisdom, and I bet you're a really cool person, and I would love to learn how you see the world and how you would like it to change and why you think we've been at war and how to do better than that!"

She bows. "Pleasure to meet you. I'd love to answer a lot of questions, but I can't, I have more people to collect and then many more people to heal. Luckily, there are many humans with more time. I assume you can transport yourself to Westcrown - assuming you know where it is - but if you'd prefer to arrive today, and have time to acquaint yourself with the city and its people before the convention itself begins, I can also transport you there myself."