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desired to learn the outside languages it was possible that he would not have been able to. There were few Rhiathon that had any contact with the outside world, and they would have been unlikely to be willing to teach him.
The truth was, he had never learned because he had never even considered for a moment that he might ever be leaving the woods at all. He had fully expected to spend the full extent of his years among the shady trees. He had never even felt the desire, that pulled so many, to explore the world beyond the Rhiathon realm.

In the end, though, something had drawn him out from his beloved trees. Something had dragged him from the woods he loved, the woods that were part of his blood and his life. He had never taken that something into account in all of his plans. Even now, as homesickness filled his very soul, the call of that thing drove him on, as a salt in his blood. It had been there since he had heard the first of the stories, and had grown past ignoring as time went on. It set his blood on fire and drove him ever forward, further and further away from his home. It was a fever in him, but a welcome one, and he had raced from his green home with his arms stretched out towards it.
Lionesse. It was that mysterious hero of the people of the Island, the Gauldra, that had drawn him from his peaceful haven. It was because of her that every day he drew further and further from his home.
Even in the woods they had heard of her, riding down fearlessly on those who would travel across the territory she had claimed as her own, disarming their guards, stripping them of their wealth, and riding off like a phantom, untraceable, ever valiant, and she only a maid, and beautiful, if the stories spoke true. She was an outside hero that even the Rhiathon could honor and respect. She was full of a courage and law all to herself. It was Lionesse that had dragged him from his precious woods and it was she that he was seeking.
"And I'm in love with her," he thought to himself.
He moved forward faster, his long legs moving easily, clad in the green of his home. His heart beat a little faster. A tune sang in his head and a slight smile touched his face, making him look all the world like a woods-spirit, moving among the mortal men of the day-lands, clad in his green, with his harp at his side. He was a creature born of the outsiders' stories, had he known it, from a time before the Rhiathon had slipped away from the world into their green woods and forest glades.
The people

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