This sun-dappled land contradicts the tumult and pain of his mother’s memories. It is hard to imagine evil lurking beneath the boughs of this grand green canopy, hard to picture a herd who ignores a filly lingering at the edges, always, until shadows and shade are more familiar and comfortable to her than the bright-eyed attention of others. Harder still to picture a black stallion standing in a sunny glade shaking his own flesh and blood by the neck while the mother stands aside, meek and docile, and merely watches this violence as if she is one of the trees herself. What evil rooted her hooves so firmly to the Forest floor that she did not leap to defend their son? Perhaps the same that enabled her not to see her own daughter year after year after year despite her proximity, as if the bay blanketed girl had truly been a ghost floating through the Forest: intangible, unseen.

Rille does not like these thoughts, but he understands their necessity. Though this land is beautiful a great harm sprung from it, infecting generations of horses in an effect that is likely still rippling, however subtly, through the islands today. He is here to disrupt that flow and divert it and, if he can, overwhelm it in return with his own influence from within the Thicket. No child of his will be ignored nor unwanted, and from that dense bramble will spring strong spirits with unwavering inner flames to spread their light across not only Luthien but each island secured to this chain. He will find every evil shoot within his home and crush it beneath his hooves, for those seeds were sown with no purpose other than destruction and suffering. Such a cancer must not be allowed to spread.

Rille lowers his gaze with a determined snort, only to behold a mare approaching. She is beautiful. Her face and legs are the color of rich, dark earth or the burnished trunks of trees wet with rain, while her body is dusted with a layer of snow so fine one can still see some of the pigment of what lies beneath. She introduces herself as Persephone, the name ringing familiar in his dark ears. “Shamwari spoke of you. And yes, I believe you can,” Rille replies warmly. The scratch on his upper lip has healed to a narrow scab and no longer stings when he tries to talk, though it does pull uncomfortably from time to time as the skin beneath finishes healing. It is a process, one that must begin from the inside out, much like his foray into the Thicket before extending into the rest of Luthien and beyond. He takes another step away from the stream to offer Persephone his muzzle by way of introduction, and as he draws back they are joined by another. This mare, too, is dark of face save for a pale splash on her nose, but she is blanketed more liberally in white than Persephone and for a long moment Rille stands in captivated, comfortable silence as he observes the fascinating patchwork of colors that make up this mare’s -Evren’s- coat. Snow drapes her back and hips like a stark skyline interrupted by the strong brown peaks of a distant mountain range which rises from her barrel. Or, no; perhaps it is as if a cloud has settled across her back and she has walked right through another so that its essence still clings to each leg. He sees, too, a tree trunk buried under new snow.

Rille’s gaze sharpens as he refocuses on the present with a contented sigh and looks between the two mares. They stand companionably with one another, and he senses no ill-will in their presence. Surely if evil was still rooted here he would sense it. All he feels in this balmy, bright patch of forest is peace. “I live in the Thicket, yes,” he says before offering Evren his dark muzzle for their own exchange of breaths. “My name is Rille. My mother was born here, in these woods, and I wished to see them for myself.” His eyes rise again to the trees towering overhead, following for a moment the path of a squirrel leaping from one bough to another. It catches its balance with expert rotations of its tail before scrabbling swiftly higher, and Rille returns again to earth.

“This land is older than any of us,” Rille says, thinking of all the lifetimes these great trees have witnessed, however distantly, as they whisper-sing their long, groaning notes to one another. They are unperturbed by the conflict roiling through the mortals passing between their trunks: no violence yet has managed to fell them, and they will stand tall and strong together long after Rille and Persephone and Evren are dead and gone. He is here, not for the trees, but for the souls carried through the woods. “It has seen much pain, and sorrow, and bloodshed. Friend against foe and kin versus kin, it all amounts to the same: suffering.” He exhales softly. “I would put an end to it altogether, if I could, but where there is life there is hardship—just as where there is hardship, there must be healing. If you would not mind,” he continues, directing this question toward Persephone, “I would follow the path of my mother to grant her some peace.”