Elderstone — The Mosswater Sentinel

The morning light drifted through Mosswater Hollow like a soft whisper, settling gently over the pools that lay quiet and glass-still. Thin veils of mist curled around the mossy stones, moving slow enough to watch each ribbon form. This hollow had its own heartbeat — steady, ancient, unhurried — just like the Ranger who called it home.

Elderstone rested at the water’s edge, his massive shell mottled with age and soft green moss, as though he’d grown straight out of the earth itself. He did not move often, but when he did, it was with the deliberate certainty of someone who had seen hundreds of years and forgotten none of them.

That was how he greeted Ffyo when she arrived — a wild gust barreling into a world built on quiet.

She practically skidded across the moss. “Elderstone! I messed up again — I think — maybe — I don’t know. Everything got jumbled and fast and tangled and the Fugglies came back and—”

Elderstone slowly raised one heavy brow ridge. He did not blink. He did not interrupt. He simply waited for the storm to land.

And eventually, like a wind gust that realized it couldn’t bowl over a mountain, she did.

When the air finally stilled, Elderstone spoke. His voice carried the low warmth of shifting water and deep earth.“Begin again,” he said. “Start with what you understand — not what you fear.”

Ffyo drew in a long, grounding breath — the kind his presence demanded — and explained how she’d been helping someone in the Empire Network whose story kept changing. Each time she reached for a solution, the person grew more frustrated. The more she tried to help, the more tangled the moment became.

“And then,” she said softly, wings dimming, “I felt like I was drowning in their confusion. I don’t know if I went too far in or not far enough. Everything got blurry.”

Elderstone nodded once, like a tree acknowledging wind it had seen a thousand times.“Confusion,” he said, “is most dangerous when it is shared without intention.”A ripple of soft light glided across the pond beside them as he turned his ancient gaze toward the water. “Tell me — whose confusion was it at first? Theirs… or yours?”

Ffyo’s ears lowered.“Theirs,” she whispered. “But when I couldn’t understand what they were trying to say, I… borrowed it. And carried it like it was mine.”

“A common mistake,” Elderstone murmured. “Borrowed storms feel like our own if we grip them too tightly.” He touched one thick, reassuring claw to the moss between them. “Your job is not to take the storm. Your job is to see it clearly — so they can see it too.”

Ffyo blinked at him. “But how do you do that?”

Elderstone smiled — slow, gentle, rooted — the kind of smile that felt like an anchor being lowered into calm water.“By being the quietest pool in the hollow,” he said. “Chaos reflects in chaos. Clarity reflects in calm.”

Something inside Ffyo eased — not because she had solved the problem, but because Elderstone had shown her a truth she hadn’t known she was missing:

Clarity isn’t found by diving deeper. It’s found by standing still long enough to see the bottom.

“So…” she breathed, “I wasn’t failing?”

Elderstone shook his great, ancient head. “No. Little windfire,” he said softly, “you were learning. And learning is never failure.”

And in that moment, under the gentle hush of Mosswater Hollow, Elderstone began teaching Ffyo one of the oldest Ranger disciplines:

The Art of Holding the Moment Without Carrying It.