The Trees of Ebbs
Ancient, vast and half-awake, each with a sleeping face in its trunk. They are the reason the two worlds stay two.
What they hold
The Trees of Ebbs keep the dream world and the waking world apart. Where a Tree stands, the membrane holds, and the Reach cannot flood into the waking world and drown it. Each Tree’s eyes are closed, like a sleeper who must never fully wake.
Stitches
The Trees did not simply grow. Whenever the world began to split, the menders, the Kregs, sowed a Tree into the seam, and its roots sewed the split shut. The line of Trees down the spine of the world is a line of stitches across a scar.
The hollowing
The Trees are being hollowed out from the inside, one by one. That is the work of the wraiths, who serve the Author: every hollowed Tree is a stitch being pulled. Fewer menders meant fewer new Trees, until the seam gave way and the Reach was sundered.
The Branches of Ebbs
The Trees are tended by the Branches of Ebbs: tall, slender, walking branch-kin, mossed over and flowering, home to small animals, butterflies and snails. Where a Tree is rooted and immense, a Branch moves. One of them helps Caul.
