When I was born my home, the forest that we called Doriath, was like any other forest. Monsters could come. Wolves, beasts without name. My parents hid with me in the tallest trees and tried to keep me quiet. [She remembers it in the way that the children of the Eldar could, and those of men could not. She remembers everything since she was conceived. There had been fear and horrors that did not bear repeating, but there had also been love. So much love and warmth even when it was too dangerous to light fires or even stray below the canopy of the trees. Mithiel swallows, ignoring the ache in her heart as she remembers the young faces of her parents who had been so brave for her. Whispering her stories and promises they did not know they could keep.]

You see our King was missing for centuries and we lingered, looking for him and in that time my parents made me but the world was dark then. Frightening. And then we found the King and also, it turned out, his Queen. Melian the Maiar. A powerful being who pushed all evil out of the forest and kept it out for all the centuries of my life.

Until her husband died, stupidly as I said, and she left us as though we were nothing.

I was sheltered because I did not have to face the world. The evils that visited us never pierced the girdle, or at least never got far and a simple elf-maid such as myself who cared only for minding the forest and making friends out of rabbits and trees was left to know only the wonders of the world and forget those early horrors.

For a time, anyway.The King has passed into the West and I can only assume she did as well. The princess is long dead, her children ruled briefly, though mortal young things they were and now it all sinks deeper and deeper below the waves and I have had my eyes forced open for good.