Displaced: Kaelyn Considers Her Home
Note: this probably doesn't fit. But hey, it's NaNoWriMo, so I'm moving forward, not back. Enjoy some background on parts of the world that will probably never make it into the real book. If that ever becomes a thing.
Kaelyn had been sitting here for hours. Outside the cave, leaning against a wall that she knew was fake, but felt real to her back. It was warming up ever so slightly like stone does when a human leans on it for a long time. if she picked at it with her fingers it crumbled a little bit. This next bit was going to take a two-pronged approach, Kaelyn here and Mason back in his workshop. They didn't have long. Three more days. the thinking and planning and waiting had been agonizing, but it was finally coming to a head. It shouldn't have taken this long, but what could you do? Things took as long as they took.
Kaelyn was still missing something, she was sure of it. She felt that if she had the time she could think through this, figure out what was missing. If she had the time she could solve these problems But she didn't, and what's more, she wouldn't be thinking about these things if there wasn't a crisis happening right now. It was a terrible conundrum; she was getting the test before she had learned the lesson. She hoped she learned it in time.
Kaelyn thought about her life growing up. It felt like a different lifetime, a different person. She had lived much farther inland, in a low alpine valley, in Coombe, a small town that always seemed like a place to be from, not a place to be. Of course she thought that now. In reality Coombe was a lumber town, dedicated to both planting and harvesting trees in the valley around them, then sending the lumber down the river to be processed.
There were two parts of the valley that were never touched, though: the Feywild and the Druids' Enclave.
People in Coombe didn't trust either the Fey nor the Druids, which isn't to say they didn't have dealings with them. Druids often had cures or specifics that the Healers didn't, but the costs were steep and sometimes inexplicable. A healer was a part of the community, and what they asked for was simply what it took to keep operating in that community.
The Druids seemed to consider the people of Coombe as no more or less important than the trees or ivy. They were just part of the valley and sometimes the Druids prioritized the deer over the people, or a stand of oak trees was deemed more important than a farmer's new field. It didn't really make sense to argue with them, either, Somehow things seemed to work when you did things the way the Druids suggested, and tended to work very poorly when you didn't. Marriages between the people of Coombe and the Druids were rare but did happen. Rarely did the couple stay in Coombe, though. People of Druidic extraction soon found the societal forms of even a fairly rustic and tolerant community like Coombe to be too structured, and objected to restrictions like “wearing clothes all the time” or limiting when it was and was not appropriate to shout at forest spirits.
Those who moved to the Druid Enclave would come and visit their families of course, but the look in their eyes suggested that their new home had a great hold on them.
Kaelyn had been to the Enclave a few times and it seemed...fine. People lived in whatever structures made sense to them, some in very temporary tents, some in houses in the trees, some in caves or holes in the ground, some in large, well constructed yurts, as snug and permanent as any villager's house. She found the Druids themselves to be...interesting but not insane. Many were well-spoken, well mannered and well educated, but had chosen a different life, a way to exist closer to nature. This didn't fill Kaelyn with the repugnance it seemed to spark in some of her family members.
but the Fey were worse. They may or may not have been human, it was hard to tell. Certainly they looked human, and there were stories of half-fey and fey marriages, but nobody in Kaelyn's life had ever met such a person.
For the most part the Fey were glimmers in the forest, the laughing people, the cruel people. They might offer sage advice, or may try to hunt you for sport. It wasn't clear which reaction you would get at any moment. Occasionally they would come to Coombe to sell charms and trinkets they made specifically for trade. But the prices they charged were as inexplicable as anything else. Two identical charms would be sold for entirely different prices, often while both customers were within earshot. The Fey merchant, smiling and gleeful, would be utterly unable to understand why this caused consternation.