Very pretty! And persistently pretty for the next several hours as they pass the beaches and continue on over the water.

Promise watches it be pretty, semi-alone with her thoughts.

"It's gorgeous."

"One of my favourite landscape features."

"What are the other best ones?"

"I started over a much bigger ocean, all the way on the other side of central Queenscourt territory from here, and it had floating islands with incredible crystal formations growing on their undersides. For a good few centuries they were the only landmasses I had any experience with. I was mildly disappointed by my first sight of ground I couldn't get underneath; it seemed to be missing the best part."

"Yes. I like that one. Let's see... as of about a century ago, there were a set of tuned canyons nearish your tree that whistled music in the wind; are they still there and have you heard them?"

"They were there when I started. I was going to go but didn't get a chance. I was very new when Thorn got me."

"Ah."

"I was waiting until I learned to turn invisible because I'd heard they were colonized by razorfeet."

"I heard that on an island in the far west there's a volcano made of bands of clear gemstones."

"I've seen that. It's a sight. I wanted to see it erupt, but I couldn't stay long enough that trip and I haven't been back yet."

"I don't remember hearing anything about how it erupts."

"Mercury. Kills most of the plants all the way down to the shore every time, but the interval is usually long enough for things to grow back, and some of them thrive on it."

"That sounds gorgeous."

"Yes."

"The library I used to go to was built into a cliffside. There was nothing naturally interesting about the place but they'd done a lot of art around the entryways."

"I am extremely fond of libraries. Pretty libraries, so much the better."

"The inside was nice too. Mosaics in the floors. The shelves were carved. They'd take art as membership payment."

"Before the Queenscourt, almost all the time I spent interacting with other fairies was in or on the way to libraries."

"Do you happen to know where the one nearest the forest we're going to is?"

"I didn't stop at any on this trip, but I know of one a few miles north and another one to the southwest near the edge of the desert, and I don't know of any reason why either of them might have collapsed in the last twenty years. They weren't being maintained by the breeders who left the forest recently. If you settle all the way in the southwestern corner of the forest, they'll be about the same distance away; otherwise the one to the north will be closer."