By Thistledown Quillweaver, Correspondent-at-Large
Evening Light, River-Side
It begins (again) with a river. Doesn’t it always?
This time, it’s the Vel — wide as a thought you’re trying not to have. It slips along Gildraen’s southwestern flank, skirting the edge of order, gathering tributaries, settlements, secrets. I’ve taken it into my head (and my editor’s purse) to follow that river from the point it first shakes free of the Varelha — its broad, roaring twin that cleaves Gildraen from the outer wilds — and ride it south, all the way to where the two old waters braid together again.
Why? Because the Vel is different. Because while most of Gildraen prefers to gaze inward, the Vel flows out — and along its banks, the world is mixed. Fae and human live side by side along the banks, their settlements distinct but interwoven — each shaped by the same river, though rarely by the same hand. It is a region of crossings. A realm stitched with confluence. And I, dear reader, intend to see what holds.
So begins my travel series: “Along the Vel” — a journey through the riverside towns and borderlands of Penvellyn, from fork to confluence.
The journey thus far has been slow and soggy. At one point I shared bench space with a basket of barkless turnips and a boy who insisted they were named individually. (Hello again, Bernald.) Eventually, we reached Penvellyn — a region whose name sounds like the end of a conversation you weren’t invited to.
The inn I’ve found sits half on land, half on stilts in the river. The beer is warm. The floor is damp. The scent is…gladly not transmittable by writing.
Which brings us to this first edition — in which, while fully aware I am travelling a river, I did not anticipate writing quite so much about fish.
Current Locale: The Foot-Ferry Tavern
Imagine a low-slung wooden hall, built on roughhewn pylons sunk into the velvety surface of the Vel—inside, the river laps beneath your boots, soft as breath, cold in summer, steady always. The air is alive with the tang of brine and hearth-cinders: smoke, salt, and the sweet nuttiness of fragrant trout fat rendered on stone hearth. Nets hang from rafters beside garlic braids. Markets squat on the banks—one for tools, one for linen, but most arresting of all: a corridor of wooden stalls dripping with fish.
Here, in the dim amber light, salmon lie with their silver tails set into straw; trout glisten on bedded ferns; even eels coiled in shallow bowls of peat water—deceased, honored, and awaiting the deft hand of the hearth.
The Defish-er Arrives
A figure slides in through the water-door: Bryda Keall, slender-faced, water-worn trader—silver fingers, aquamarine eyes, and a cloak drenched from river dawns. She tends the fish with murmured reverence, her hands tracing scales as though reading prophecies. I’ve heard tell she knows the Vel’s moods as well as any in Penvellyn; her business is not just fish, but stories, and every drowned trout has one.
I’ll sit—feet submerged, cloak brushing the river’s surface—and ask Bryda to tell me that story. To defish is no common practice here; it’s a kind of ritual unspooling. And I, notebook in hand, shall measure words in steam and silver as the fish is laid open, flesh to flame, tale to tongue.
“It is up to us to collect the drownèd fish,” began my confidante of the night.
I was forced immediately to confess my confusion. “A drownèd fish, sir?” I blurted, temporarily a-muddle.
“Sir, I do say: drownèd fish. Not drowned — perish the thought!” She laughed incredulously, then continued, “But drownèd, as in ‘soft-eyed, turn-bellied, river-wrapped and worthy‘.”
“But how may a fish come to drown, dear Bryda?” I pressed, still slapped with confusion.
Bryda was kind enough to aid me in understanding, enough to later produce this guide.
A Fish May Be Called Drownèd If:
It dies unnaturally, in water
Caught in the wrong current, swallowed by a wrong-bellied eddy, trapped beneath ice, or in a forgotten eel-run. Lost from its shoal and turned belly-up in still water.
It dies before its proper time
Not from age, not from spawning, not from ritual — but from misfortune. In this, it is unsettled, and called drownèd not because it lacks air — but because it lacks story
It dies with no one to witness
This is the saddest drowning of all. A fish who bore a tale, but none to take it. It is believed their dreams leak into the Vel’s braid, causing strange catches of moss or birdsong in the nets.
Thus: to be drownèd is not simply to die in water.
It is to die between meanings — unhooked from tale, tether, or tide.
“You see now, sir?” my host concluded. “A fish may breathe water — and still drown in silence.”
And, gratefully, I did. In Penvellyn, a drownèd fish is not misfortune.
It’s an offering, a sign, a season’s note in flesh. I was able to glean the local lore as the night went on.
“When the first drownèd trout appears beneath the ferry-tree, the festival of Days-Turn begins.”
“He brought her no gold, no silver — only a drownèd fish and a willow-lark feather.”
“Even the bells hush for a drownèd salmon.”
I tried, of course, to learn the village’s name — to note its origins, its founding, its function beyond fish. But no one would quite say. The maps don’t help. It seems this particular bend in the Vel is known mostly for its drownings — soft-eyed, storyless, or otherwise — and has made most of its living off the catching, telling, and salting of such.
Next Moorings
There is more to say — and further still to go.
The Vel runs on, and so shall I.
Next, it’s on toward the denser towns — stranger ferries, older stone — and a place where, if rumour holds, the bells toll silver at dusk.
I’ll be there soon. Notebook in hand.
