Blie, Green Wing

Many name them the Fey and call them rumor; yet those who have tarried near the forest’s secret heart have seen the Green Wing with their waking eyes. They are the Blie—diminutive, winged folk of mammal’s blood—whose lives are braided closely with Moab’s green intent. In old recollections they walked beside the Alfra and the Dhukura when the woods were schools and the rivers were scripture, guiding the temper of growth and the hush of rest. Their stature is a wonder in itself: a bare sixteen to twenty inches from heel to crown, slender and quick, with faces fine boned and luminous, eyes bright as dew at dawn, and wings that catch the sun in panes of emerald and glass. Hair ranges in wood-shades, and their features take on angles that seem carved by leaf and light.

Do not be fooled by smallness. In flight they are nearly unseeable, vanishing where gold beams break through high leaves, their passage mistaken for the idle stirring of a branch. They prefer swiftness and subtlety to clash. Darts as fine as thorns, dusts that steal wakefulness for an hour, brief workings of Tovan Ki that turn a patch of air to glare or make a path believe itself elsewhere—such are their instruments. Above all, they are never alone. Bees, moths, and hornets answer their motions as hounds answer a huntsman; what begins as a whispering cloud becomes a wall of stings that blinds and confounds. Yet they are fragile in the manner of larks. A mailed fist could crush where a gentle hand would be wiser, and in the open field against towering foes their bones and light frames fare poorly.

Their polity is monarchic and communal in the same breath. A queen is acknowledged—and sometimes a chain of queens, elder and heir—but the homes are not cities. Rather, clusters of kin make hidden courts in flowered hollows, old tree-bolts, and deftly woven lofts among the boughs, all of them gathered within the unseen compass of their sovereign’s care. There they keep the green rules: never take what the grove has not offered; speak softly where sap runs; praise rain even when it ruins a feast. Feasting, indeed, is a thing of hum and flutter and a glimmer of bright cups, while disputes are settled by patient listening and a choice of tasks that lets pride cool in service.

Travelers who come with clean hands and a respectful pace may find that paths smooth before them and gnats ignore their eyes. Raiders discover other welcomes. Guided swarms, sudden darkness like a net, and tiny weapons pricked in a score of places make courage falter and direction flee. The Mopru scorn them with ugly names yet keep distance from their groves; Mogs curse them in fear after vanishing into a thicket and walking out stripped of plunder and bravado alike. Of their magic the learned write carefully: many among the Green Wing show Tovan Ki in some gentle measure, more bent toward veiling and pacifying than to harm. Thus, they abide at the edge of seeing—a rumor for the boastful, a certainty for the humble—and under their quick hands the forest forgets to be afraid.