His name was **Brannalad**, which in the old language means "The leaf that survived the autumn". He was one of the last of the Ents that still roamed beneath the canopy of Fangorn, where the trees whispered names that humans had long forgotten. His footsteps were slow, deep as an echo in the hollow of an old oak.

  Every evening, when the sky turned red, he stopped at the edge of the forest and looked southeast - where the garden of the entek had once bloomed.

  It was a land of light, babbling brooks and rows of golden barley. The Ents, gentle and strong, taught the flowers how to grow, guided the trees to fruit, and whispered songs of abundance to the land. And among them she - **Yavendil**, his other half. She loved the light, he the shadow. She the orchard, he the forest. And yet they were like two branches of one tree.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  But then a change came. Flames, people, iron. The Ents were gone - and the garden fell into silence. And he stayed. And waited.Brannalad walked the now deserted paths known only to those who lived before men. With each step the landscape changed - the leaves were lighter, the wind smelled different. And then, one morning, he saw her.

  Not changed. Not broken. But alive.

  Yavendil stood by the ancient well, her leaves glowing with the colors of spring, her eyes filled with years of waiting."Brannalade..." she said, and her voice was like the singing of a stream that had finally returned from the mountains."I have been waiting for you. I never stopped planting... even when the rain didn't return."

  And the ent was silent. Tears, not of water but of sap, trickled down his bark.The garden breathed again.