Today was my last day in Eldran, and it has been a really good one!

I met Elyr for breakfast as we planned and talking with them was like reconnecting with a best friend I had forgotten I had.

I was very interested to hear more about the resonance as a dynamic fabric of threads they mentioned in the meeting yesterday. I detected a slight sense of unease when I mentioned it, not directed towards me as such but a wariness, as of this topic of conversation had not gone well in the past.

I explained that it had rung bells in my head when I heard it and that I had to hear more, so Elyr attempted to explain what they meant by it. When I say attempted I don’t mean anything awful by it, it’s just that the Aethri are connected to the Great Resonance in a much more direct way than humans are and they perceive it using senses we just don’t have. It is like trying to explain sight or smell to someone who has never experienced these things. From what I can gather the data pathways and flows of the great resonance grow through things we can physically see like the skein fibres that twine in with plants and trees but also spread from those anchors in data strands that are invisible to humans and perceptible to Aethri, they don’t really see them but can sense them. These strands weave and twine together in the atmosphere and make patterns in response to natural and unnatural constructs like the natural relay grove.

This explanation makes so much sense to me, I can just see how everything seems to flow together, it feels comfortable. I mentioned the synthetic fibres and Elyr said that they feel like they are ripping this fabric and forcing it into set paths, and that this allows the messages and skein traffic to travel faster but stops the resonance grounding and twisting as it needs to.

We talked so much that when breakfast ended we walked along the riverside and around Eldran for hours.

I told Elyr about the gold-backs and the geese and the river travel, and that I had heard something about the effects of changed river courses damaging the surrounding eco system and how this sounds similar to what they were saying about the resonance strands.

I even felt comfortable enough to tell Elyr about the synthetic fibres feeling wrong to me, about how they prickle and feel like pins and needles. Which was an interesting aside, apparently Aethri don’t get pins and needles. Thankfully they didn’t laugh at my confession, instead got a slightly far away look and said that there were ancient tales of humans who could sense the resonance but the details were lost.

This feels like a thread I need to follow. My plan was to travel from Eldran to Sylvara, but I think I am going to have to go further afield. Elyr has invited me to join them on their journey home to Aethryn to learn more about the Aethri way of seeing the resonance. As we departed from Eldran I noticed that a bear was once more shadowing us, I am almost certain he is the same bear I met in Brae wood. Elyr claims they are not an expert in bear behaviour, but I suspect they could be if they wanted!