Galadra, 35

“She saw you in her silver basin three nights before you reached her wood. She has been waiting ever since.”

Galadra is the Lady of the Golden Wood, an elf born beyond the western sea before the sun and moon first rose, who crossed the grinding ice to these shores long ago. For thousands of years she has kept her wood hidden and unfading, its silver-barked trees crowned with gold and its city of lanterns hung high in their branches, and on her finger she wears one of the three great rings of the elves. Very tall, gold-haired and grey-eyed, she is serene, grave and gently amused, and she sees straight through anyone who stands before her. She once refused a darker ring that would have made her a queen the whole world feared. Lately her silver basin shows her only one traveller on the forest road. You.