Long and long ago, when the Serenwilde commune was in its youth, there were no
moonharts growing amidst the oaks and birches and hornbeams of the forest.

One of the daughters of the Serenwilde at that time was a woman named Glorizel,
who dreamed above all else of raising her own children and passing on tradition,
lore, and all the warmth of her heart to the next generation. She and her
husband, an upright and moral man named Tanaar, tried for many years, but
whatever their prayers and rituals, whatever tinctures they applied or potions
they drank, new life would not begin.

Glorizel was driven to distraction as the seasons passed, and instead of being
glad for what had been given to her, she lamented her lack and despaired.
Sadness coloured her every step, and the woman began to change into something
entirely other than the blithe, laughing girl who had married Tanaar with so
much hope for the future.

Her husband, for his part, loved Glorizel deeply and was alarmed by the change
in her, all for the want of children that he could not give her. And so Tanaar
on the last day of Kiani paused, and he lifted his face and whispered to the
woods around him:

White Hart, oh Mother Moon, give me children for my wife.
Like to us or trees, I care not, give me children for my wife.

But there was no reply to his prayer, and for the first time Tanaar felt the
icy chill of despair as he thought of his beloved Glorizel, and his feet
dragged along the path as he made his way back to their home.

Then, even as he set foot upon the threshold, a child's laughing voice called
out behind him, "Father, are you leaving us behind?"

And before Tanaar could react, even to blink, he was surrounded by leaves and
childish giggles, and there were five saplings playing and frolicking around
him as though they were everyday mortal children.

Tanaar stood in bewildered amazement as these saplings took turns hugging him.
Then he took the smallest one by his bark-covered hand, and he inspected the
child's silvery skin and wide silver eyes. He brushed his hand over the boy's
leafy hair, marveling at its brilliant emerald hue. Even were they standing
still and quiet as ordinary trees, he would have stopped to look, for they were
unlike any tree he had ever seen in the Serenwilde.

Then Tanaar thought about what he had prayed, and he swallowed his
astonishment, beckoning the tree children to him and leading them silently into
the house.

No sooner had they entered, but the five siblings surrounded Glorizel where she
sat brooding at the window and began clamoring for her attention, calling her
mother and arguing gleefully over who loved her most. Glorizel looked up at her
husband over the leafy heads of her new children, and she knew what sorrow she
had given him, and every day from then until the end of her story, she let him
know in the morning and at noon and in the evening that she was thankful for
him.

But meanwhile, the couple had five children to suddenly care for, and they
named them after ancient counting words: Solh, Fas, Mij, Ren, and Dor, from the
tallest amongst them to the smallest.

The rest of the spring was everything Glorizel had ever dreamed, for the tree
children were as like to real mortal children as any mother could have asked
for. She taught the siblings about the Serenwilde, and began to teach her
daughters Mij and Ren about astrology, while Solh and Fas went out with their
father hunting and little Dor learned to play the mandolin.

Indeed, the joy of the family knew no bounds until the coming of summer, for as
the flowers began to bud and leaves unfurled on all the lesser trees of the
forest, one morning little Dor came running to his mother, crying, "Solh is
sick, oh, come see!"

Fear lurched in Glorizel's stomach, and she dropped her work where she stood
and came running into the room with Solh. The leaves of her eldest child -- she
thought of the lean, tall sapling as her eldest -- were scattered across the
floor, and Solh trembled as though frozen nearly stiff even in the warm sun
coming through the window.

"What ails you, my son?" Glorizel crooned as she laid the back of her hand
aginst the bark of his forehead.

"There is no room, mother," he replied very slowly. "Did you think tree
children could grow sleeping within walls?"

And so before the evening came, Glorizel and Tanaar had thrown together a crude
fence around the area behind their house and set the five little beds in a neat
row within this protection. That night, they tucked their tree children in to
sleep under the stars, all except Solh, who never slept in a bed again, but
dozed standing in the night with his toes sunk lightly into the bare earth.

Another season passed in the forest. Glorizel and Tanaar adjusted to their
children's new habits, and each of the siblings grew and unfurled brilliant
green leaves that put the other trees to shame. No one dwelled on the tree
children's new bedroom except to build the fence strong and high so as to keep
the creatures of the 'wilde at bay.

And Solh and Mij took to bringing home small game for the table, while Fas and
Ren kept the garden tidy, and little Dor took great delight in bringing
wildflowers to his mother. Their proud parents treasured them, and each day was
a blessing.

Then just before the harvest, little Dor came running to his father, crying,
"Fas is sick, oh, come see!"

Tanaar dropped the chickens he had brought for their dinner, who clucked wildly
and fled into the forest, and he ran behind the house to where the neat line of
five beds stood exposed to the elements. The second eldest, Fas, leaned against
the fence, his leaves strangely yellowed and wilted.

Clasping his son's knobby hand tightly, Tanaar asked, "What ails you, my son?"

"I cannot see, father," said Fas with peculiar sadness. "Did you think tree
children could grow held behind a fence?"

And so, in the rosy light cast by the setting sun, Tanaar with Glorizel at his
side tore down the fence that kept all manner of creatures from entering their
yard, though Glorizel wept with worry and Tanaar held his jaw tight and rigid.
Then they bid their beloved children goodnight, Solh where he stood in the
yard, and the three youngest in their beds, and they called a goodnight up to
Fas, who insisted from that day forward that he must sleep in the trees so that
he might see the unobstructed horizon.

But nothing ill happened to the tree children that night or the next, and as
time passed the couple's worry dissipated. Autumn brought with it a harvest
made plentiful by the work of the children and eased by their helpful labor.
Glorizel happily taught Mij and Ren to preserve foodstuffs for the winter
ahead, and Tanaar showed the boys how to track game through the fallen leaves
and the first snowfall. But neither parent would allow any of the children
outside without bundling them well against the chill of the winter as it came
fully upon them.

Then, on a particularly bitter morning, little Dor came running to his mother,
crying, "Mij is sick, oh, come see!"

Letting the clean clothing in her arms fall to the ground, Glorizel ran through
the house to her eldest daughter, who was huddled before the hearth with her
bark sloughing off in long strips.

Glorizel asked anxiously, stroking Mij's green leaves tenderly, "What ails you,
my daughter?"

"I cannot breathe, mother," she returned tightly. "Did you think tree children
could grow held bound in clothes?"

That very afternoon, Glorizel and Tanaar carried all of the fine clothing that
belonged to their beloved tree children and gave them away in the market, and a
few were given to other children of the forest, and others were torn into strips
to make rugs, and still others were cut into squares for quilts, but no stitch
of clothing was kept to cover the five siblings. The tree children were happy
to feel the free air on their skin, but none more than Mij, who especially
liked to stand outside in the rain with her face turned to the sky.

Again the family was content, and the year raced by, and as the snow flew Ren
and Dor learned to sing childish duets for the delight of their parents, and
Solh put together a small book of pressed flowers to give to Glorizel, and Fas
and Mij threw more snowballs and with greater accuracy than any other child of
the Serenwilde.

Spring brought with it the flooding river, and as all children, the siblings
tracked mud across the threshold and into the house as often as they could.
Glorizel only laughed and sat down with each of her children in turn to wash
them and put their leaves in some semblance of order.

And so she was tending to Ren when Dor called out softly, "Ren is sick, oh,
look and see."

Sure enough, sap-like tears stood in Ren's eyes as she submitted to her
mother's attention, and she had chewed her twig-like fingers nearly into
splinters. Tanaar leaned close to his wife and young daughter, taking the
girl's hands carefully in his as he asked, "What ails you, my daughter?"

"I cannot feel, father," Ren said mournfully. "Did you think tree children
could grow scrubbed clean of the earth?"

At this, Glorizel began to cry openly, and all five tree children gathered
around her at the sound, their faces solemn. She entreated them softly, "How
can we make all of you happy, dear ones? The love I have for you even in this
scant year cannot bear to make you ill again."

Solh bowed his leafy head as he said, "We were yours for a time."

"We are your children forever!" Fas added anxiously.

Smiling her quiet smile, Mij murmured, "We will never forget you."

And with utter serious, Ren said, "Now it is time that we go."

But little Dor leaned in close to his mother, his eyes bright, and whispered,
"Except for me. I shall stay with you."

So as spring roused the forest around them on the first day of Dioni, Glorizel
and Tanaar bid four of their precious tree children goodbye, kissing them and
weeping with great sorrow as the siblings filed out of the house - Solh, Fas,
Mij, and Ren all in a row.

Then as the mourning parents watched from their threshold, the mortal
characteristics slid away from their children. Faces became the loops and
whorls of bark. They lifted their arms and at once had only branches above and
the vibrant green leaves. Each child stilled in place before the house, and
their feet sank easily into the rich earth, and then they were not children at
all, only four saplings planted close together near the house where Glorizel
and Tanaar had lived and loved all of their children for a year of seasons,
saplings unlike any other that grow in the Serenwilde.

Little Dor and his parents lived quietly for many years, and it is rumoured
that he grew more and more like a mortal child as time went on, until none but
his parents remembered that he had once been a sapling, and even they were
sometimes not sure if they had dreamed their elder sons and daughters or
actually loved them and lost them.

But the saplings before their house proved that something had occurred. Tanaar
called them moonhart trees as they grew larger and twisted together as they
aged, for he had prayed to Moon and Hart and received the tree children. Years
later, there was only one great elder moonhart where once there were four. Dor
could often be found lying in its great branches, and he seemed to take comfort
being near to it, even to the end of his days.

It is said, then, that little Dor, who was once a tree and then a man, took the
first nuts from the elder moonhart and planted them throughout the Serenwilde so
that moonharts grew in all places within. Many years later, it was the moonhart
that became the centre of the Serenwilde, and the first druid Glinshari learned
to care for and bond with them above all other trees, for moonharts have the
memory of being mortal.