NOVEL NEXT Chapter 119: Groves of the Gilded Grove
The Run's gorge opened gradual to a grove where ancient oaks stood sentinel, their trunks gnarled as old hands clutching secrets, branches interlacing overhead to filter sunlight into golden shafts that pooled on the mossy floor like spilled mead.
It was a gilded interlude, this grove—a sanctuary of dappled peace where the river slowed to a glassy glide, dragonflies darting jewel-bright over lily pads, the air rich with the musk of leaf-mold and blooming nightshade, a place that felt like the world pausing to catch its breath after the Run's rushing refrains.
After the ballads' buried barbs, it felt like grace granted, the scepter's glow diffusing through the leaves like honey in tea, warming the air with a subtle sweetness that spoke of rests between movements in Valthorne's grand composition.
My coat settled soft on my shoulders, its road-worn weave catching flecks of light that made the rips look like deliberate designs, pockets heavy with the grove's gifts—a curled oak-leaf, a dragonfly wing translucent as truth.
The crew claimed the mossy clearing by mutual, wordless consent, packs down and limbs stretching in the slanted sun, the ballads' echoes lingering as harmonies rather than haunts, turning our halt into a hymn of its own.
Thorne leaned against a trunk vast as a door, staff propped beside him like a faithful hound, his form relaxed in the golden light, the Run's revelations having rippled through his reserve to reveal a man more at ease with his lineage's lyrics.
He'd hummed along in the counter-chant, his tenor threading Thorne-threads into the tapestry, and now he traced a rune on the bark with a finger, watching it glow faint before fading.
"Groves like this were Valthorne's pauses—places to let the ballads breathe, to hear the weave without the rush.
The heart's hymn waits deeper in, but here?
We listen."
His invitation hung open, the last line's lore lightened by the sharing, his presence the steady staff-note that underpinned our song.
Lilith sprawled on the moss, back against a root that cradled her like an old chair, scythe laid across her knees as she plucked at a blade of grass, twisting it into shapes that dissolved back to green.
The river's refrains had reframed her fire as fragile flicker, but she'd fanned it to full blaze in our round, her laugh now the lively line that lifted the lay.
She tossed the grass my way, watching it flutter down.
"Listening's fine, but if this grove starts harmonizing with my headaches, I'm composing a coda with steel strings."
Her quip cut light, but her eyes held the warmth of the weave we'd woven, the demon's defiance deepened by the drift.
Vorren sat cross-legged on a fallen log, knife idle in his lap as he carved idle patterns into the wood—swirls that echoed river eddies, his hands steady as the oaks around us.
The ballads had banked his strength to a barren bellows, but he'd bellowed back with bass that bolstered the bind, emerging with a quiet that rang resonant.
He glanced up, patterns pausing.
"Songs stick if you let 'em.
But we sang back.
That's the staying power."
His rumble rooted us, the smith's strike striking true in stillness.
Jex lounged against a trunk, legs kicked out, whittling his willow flute to something resembling tune, blowing a bar that warbled whimsical before dissolving into chuckles.
The Run's rhymes had ridiculed his ruses as rootless runs, but he'd rhymed back with rhythm that rallied the round, his sleights now stanzas in our shared score.
He offered the flute.
"Try it, Cecil—might make your loaf-lore sound less like a lullaby."
His grin gleamed, the spark's stanza sparking smiles.
Yvra perched on a stump ringed with toadstools, journal open to capture the grove's geometry—branch angles, light shafts, leaf-veins veering like verses—her quill dipping deliberate, turning observation to ode.
The echoes had emptied her edicts to elegies, but she'd elegized back with eloquence that elevated the ensemble, her maps now measures in the melody.
She looked up, quill pausing.
"The grove's a rest in the refrain—space to score the next stanza.
What tune do we take from here?"
Her query quartered the quiet, the navigator's note navigating next.
Fog reclined in a shaft of sun, form flecked with gold motes, tea cup casting prismatic pools on the moss as he sipped, steam spiraling up to mingle with leaf-whispers.
The ballads had blown his breath to barren breeze, but he'd breathed back with balladry that bolstered the bind, his wisdom now the woven warp of our weave.
"Refrains repeat, Cecil, but groves give grace notes—embellish the echo, or let it lay."
His murmur measured the moss, the sage's sip scoring serenity.
Sir Thrain and Sir Gorrim romped the glade's edge, Thrain attempting an "arboreal arabesque" with lance as ballet bar—"For the crown's copse caper!"—twirling into Gorrim's path, their collision cascading into a comedic cascade of clanks and cries that cleared a circle of leaves.
"Silvan slapstick!" Thrain trumpeted, while Gorrim groaned gleeful, "Dendric derring-do!"
Their grove-gambol gilded the golden hush, the knights' nonsense the naughty note in nature's nocturne.
We lingered in the light's lap, the Run's refrains refracted through grove-grace—ballads banked to beauty, confessions composed to counterpoint.
Talk trilled like thrushes—Lilith's lone lines lifted, Vorren's strength strung steady, Jex's jigs jaunty, Yvra's verses vivid, Thorne's tales tender, Fog's flows full, knights' klutzes kinetic.
The heart's hymn hummed near, but the grove gifted a grace note.
We savored it, sun slanting slow.
The Relic Run rippled on.
But in the gilded grove, we grew.
Roots in the refrain.
Ready for the river's reprise.
The estuary's tangled edges began to unravel as we pressed inland, the path straightening into a riverside trail where the water ran clearer, its surface catching the afternoon light in fleeting shimmers that danced like half-remembered dreams.
The salt-tang air softened, giving way to the clean, mineral bite of flowing freshwater laced with the earthy undertone of willow roots and distant wild mint, the kind of scent that promised renewal after the sea's relentless push.