First Reply When the Forest Dreams of Metal

[Eryndel]

Eryndel of the Emerald Grove stepped from the ramp as dawn spilled across the valley, painting the air in soft gold. The planet smelled different than Okarthel, sharper, full of metal and wind instead of soil and sap. Beneath the hum of machinery, she could feel something quieter…a tremor, like a leaf shivering before a storm.

Her emerald eyes swept the horizon, a city waking in the distance, its skyline glinting beneath the morning haze. So far from the trees, she thought, her hand brushing the carved charm at her throat, a fragment of home shaped like a twisting root. The Force moved strangely here: restless, compressed. Not wounded, but uneasy.

"Not all growth happens in soil," her mentor's voice whispered from memory. "Sometimes it takes the wind."

She breathed in the foreign air, grounding herself in that thought. Then she started forward; each step deliberate, each movement quiet as falling rain. Whether this world sought peace or chaos, she would listen first. The Grove had sent her to see, to feel, and if need be… to heal.

 

[Aiden Porte]

Eryndel
​

Aiden Porte had been watching the valley long before the transport's ramp hissed open. The first touch of dawn had spilled over the ridges, brushing warmth across the durasteel beneath his boots, and he'd felt the shift in the air a gentle stirring in the Force, like something exhaling after a long silence. When the figure emerged, he knew before she even spoke that she was not a soldier, nor an emissary. The way she moved told him everything.

There was patience in her steps. Listening in her breath.

He inclined his head slightly as she descended, the hem of her cloak catching faint light, green threads catching on the wind like the last hint of a forest carried into the city. "Eryndel." he said quietly, voice steady, respectful but laced with curiosity. "The Grove chose well to send you."

His gaze drifted past her to the horizon the gleaming towers, the flicker of transport lanes, the faint hum of droids moving along their routes. Even from here, he could feel the tension beneath it all. The pulse of lives that didn't quite align. The Force was here, yes, but tangled its rhythm more mechanical than natural, compressed into lines and grids that resisted flow.

"It's not the kind of world that welcomes roots." he murmured, almost to himself. "But it's alive in its own way. You can feel it, can't you? That… undercurrent. Like something waiting for permission to breathe again."

He gestured toward the path leading down into the awakening city, its noise still distant but growing. "Come on. Let's listen to what this place wants to tell us before we decide what's wrong with it."

There was no urgency in his tone only that calm resolve that had come to define him over the years. Yet beneath it lingered a flicker of something else, subtle as a breeze through leaves: hope.