Annon receives a Dryad’s kiss and the gift of memory in an encounter that turns his defense of a tree into a profound change in how he understands himself and others. The Dryad, Neodesha, grants him a boon that preserves every memory rather than letting pain fade; by reliving his earliest terror, Annon discovers what happened between his mother and Tyrus and is urged to face the man he has known as his uncle. The gift is wisdom, but it is not comfort: Annon must carry the full weight of what he remembers.

The encounter at the tree

After the battle, Annon waits beneath the oak he has helped save. The Dryad comes at dusk and warns him not to look at her, because seeing her will make him forget. Her presence first reaches him through voice and movement; she speaks his language, and he recognizes her as the being whose tree he defended. The restraint required of him gives the encounter its first tension: he must listen without looking, even as her voice draws his attention toward her.

Neodesha explains that Annon’s speaking her name gives him power over her. He can use it to bind her or free her from the tree, although she does not want to be freed. If he looks at her, however, he will forget her name and the power will turn against him. The boon is therefore not a simple gift without conditions: knowledge creates an asymmetry between them, and Annon must choose whether to hold that advantage or accept a different bond.

The kiss and its cost

Neodesha tells Annon that he saved her tree by facing her enemies rather than fleeing, and that this act has earned her trust. She offers the Dryad’s kiss, which brings wisdom and prevents her from stealing his memories when he looks at her. Its benefit comes with a clear cost. Annon will remember every word spoken to him, every hurt and joy; the pain of memory may lessen for others as they forget, but his will remain complete. The kiss thus makes recollection both a source of understanding and an enduring exposure to suffering.

The kiss arrives before Annon can finish deciding whether to accept it. As Neodesha presses her lips to his, his mind seems to awaken and his life opens before him. When he opens his eyes, he can see her without losing what she has told him. She explains that she has lived for several thousand years: at sixteen, the age at which Dryads are reborn, she bit the fruit of a tree in Mirrowen that grants eternal life, as part of her binding. Her appearance and identity overturn Annon’s expectation of what a Dryad might look like, while her long life underscores the difference between his brief human past and her extended existence.

Memory becomes testimony

Neodesha encourages Annon to speak about his life. He tells her about feeling abandoned by Tyrus, his pursuit of Druidecht lore, the fireblood, Tyrus’s summons to Kenatos, the quest for Drosta’s lair, and his encounters with Drosta and the Kishion. The disclosure takes until midnight. For Annon, speaking is a release from emotions and confusion he has carried alone; for Neodesha, listening is part of a different practice in which visitors may leave memories with her by surrendering them.

She describes how some visitors seek to forget their troubles, and how those who give up too much can even lose their sense of identity and abandon family ties. Such forgetfulness may relieve pain, but it leaves people weaker, with an ache and an absence they cannot repair. Annon rejects that escape: he does not want to be rid of his memories. Neodesha instead directs him to use his new wisdom to solve his problems, beginning with his sister. The gift is framed not as knowledge for its own sake but as a demand to examine what he remembers and act upon it.

The recovered infancy

As Annon searches his newly accessible memories, he reaches an episode from when he was less than two years old. He remembers his mother’s face marked by claw wounds and the fierce love he felt for her. He also remembers her shaking him and making him cry, while he was too young to understand the words around him. The memory holds love and fear together rather than simplifying his mother into either a source of comfort or a threat.

He remembers Tyrus, also scarred by claw marks, lifting him against his chest and shielding him. Blue and orange flames spit around them as Tyrus carries him away from a stone hut into a storm. Their home burns; there are screams of rage, pain, and madness. Tyrus covers Annon with his cloak and tries to soothe him, while the child is cold, hungry, frightened, and clinging to him for safety. The recollection makes Annon’s separation from his mother tangible and supplies a history behind the responsibility Tyrus has carried for him.

Kinship, grief, and what follows

When Annon wakes from the memory, his head is in Neodesha’s lap and she is gently stroking his hair. Because she experiences his memories as he relives them, their connection is also an act of shared witness. She interprets what he has recovered: Annon’s mother had the fireblood and was mad, while Tyrus felt, and still feels, a degree of responsibility for him. She cautions Annon against judging Tyrus harshly and asks him to recognize how suffering binds people to one another. Her counsel changes the meaning of the childhood memory without erasing its terror.

Neodesha believes Tyrus does not intend Annon harm and tells him that their meeting is no coincidence: Tyrus is in Canton Vaud, waiting for him. Nizeera affirms that they will face him together. Annon’s gift therefore redirects him from solitary remembrance toward a confrontation informed by the past. The Dryad’s kiss does not resolve the pain of his childhood; it equips him to remember it fully and to approach Tyrus with a more complicated understanding of love, fear, and responsibility.

The event also gives concrete form to the difference between forgetting and healing. Neodesha’s tree can offer people relief by taking memories, but Annon’s boon preserves the very experiences that make him vulnerable. In this encounter, memory is not an escape from suffering or a guarantee of comfort. It is a means of recognizing relationships that pain had obscured—and a responsibility to meet the living with what the past has revealed.