The Song of the Great Heart

Sing to me of the heart of winter on the winds from the north in a song sung since the walled world was young and the Ironwoods old as they have always been and will always be.
For then the heart rested in the valleys and its song carried far across the mountains echoing across the lance in the violet mists of eternity.
The song was so lovely it called the waters to shore and into the valley and when the tide returned to the deep it left a pearl to remember.
But pearls being round roll downmountain even kept safe by the heart and the valley and this one to the very edge of the walled world.
The heart grew in the mountain to heal the land and the pearl shone its light into the darkest valleys so even when the heart stilled forever the pearl kept its memory alive in the winds that echo eternity.

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~ Tar Gwennod of Thiad

The Madam of Thiad's explanation of those involved

"That may be the epic poem that the singers came up with over the years, I don't know who made a concubine's unexpected but not unwelcome baby into such windswept prose, but that's what it is. But Beleguriel's story starts with her mother, right along my story.
Vanessë and I were both born and raised in the midst of the war and came of age shortly after it ended, when so many of us were refugees in the mountains around Glam. When others were heading east across the bridge to make new lives, we decided that now that we were grown, we would make our home in this valley instead and make our own business.
It's quite easy to find a sire here if one's mind is toward children, so when Vanessë's mind wandered in that direction and that rugged war hero came through town, she took her opportunity before he was any the wiser.
Her daughter Beleguriel, who was called Nettle when she was a pup, was quite skilled with healing early on, and we could never keep her in the village, she was always out exploring and collecting in the hills, then the mountains, then along the coast.
So after she found that handsome shipwrecked short drink of water on the shore and dragged him back here, she used her healing skills to keep him from dying. These days we have concubines with Giant blood from all over the Realm here, but back then we hadn't seen one like him before. I knew he must have been partly High Giant, as I am, but he was something else too.
When she patched him up and he was on his way again, none of us were surprised when she got rounder in the middle. We assume she had the same idea as her mother, but a more refined eye for immortal blood. Perhaps it's being raised around me that helped her there.
That child, Vanessë's granddaughter and Beleguriel's daughter, we called her Owlet when she was little, because she was as fierce as she was adorable and seemed strangely ancient - a force of nature.
She turned out to be just as skillful as her mother with healing, but bolder by half, with a wanderlust that couldn't be contained. Even as an infant she was hunting her own food, like rabbits and squirrels with her bare hands in the forest, which was RATHER odd to the prime giants, but that's how I grew up. Now most in these lands know that just means one has some elven heritage, but back then it unnerved most folks here.
It wasn't that that pulled them away from here, it was the child, she had a bad case of the wanderlust and wanted to see the world. So we had a lovely going away party, Vanessë shed some tears, and we bid them a fond farewell as Beleguriel and Owlet set off to live wild. One or both would occasionally come back to visit and share stories for the next couple hundred years until Vanessë passed.
Beleguriel found many in need of her healing talents in the war ravaged lands to the south, especially the undermountain tunnels to the dwarven lands. She also brought order to the gathering folk there, and the small settlement grew and grew. It's a city now, the only one in all the kingdom outside of the capitol, and all from a lass from Thiad.
Her daughter, that would be Owlet, grew to take the name Hernil Wildstride, which was very fitting for what I knew of her when she was small. We haven't seen her in these parts for many centuries, but unless something happened to her, she should be out there somewhere, what with that immortal father of hers and all."