The song-story of the Green, now loud in my bones, has awakened me. I hear the tale as life in motion, the weave made real second by second, spun gleaming thread over gleaming thread. Every fleeting footfall is a drumbeat, a word, a thought blessed with shape. Each loosed arrow becomes an exclamation, a twist in the telling, a beginning in an end. I am dissolved into we.
I have become the Hunter, the Protector, the Vengeance of the Green. My memories are drawn from the rivers of history known by Bosmer since the formless times. It was my hand that carved out the heart of the Bracken Malice, the writhing foe that devoured our children and made mothers and fathers wail in torment. My own arrow pierced the eye of Dulohoth the Axehaft, vile Orc who ordered his crowd-surge of followers to burn and hew tree and frond. When sickness came to the beasts of Grahtwood, I hunted without rest a hundred nights to feed the hungry. I will hunt a hundred more.
All of these things I have done, I will do again when I am called. The cries of Y'ffre's children—their joy, fear, rage, and sorrow—only grow stronger in my heart. They are the thrumming of life in the deepest woods. I hear them in my dreams; their emotions become my own and echo a thousand times louder within me. Nothing will stop me from calling out my response. I will answer them until my blood soaks the loam and feeds the roots of graht-oaks.
Though I hear the tale the Earth Bones tell, some fear yet remains; some worry still haunts me. I am the Green Lady, and in my spirit there is no doubt that it is so. But in my mind, I am just Gwaering, archer-girl, brave but small. I am afraid. Will Gwaering fade away? Can she withstand the torrent of primal emotion that now rises? Is she strong enough to answer the Green and play her part? Can she protect her people and the Silvenar?
But I take some small solace knowing that my doubts and fears carry little consequence. They are a small digression, the interruption of an impatient child as the Spinner tells his tale. Time will carry on, and the story will be told without pause, never reaching an end, but ebbing and flowing. I will be called, and if my voice is not strong enough to answer, my role will end and another will emerge. Such, I see now, is the way of the world.