After the Long Night, the Elven Family Lost Me

"In an elven family, when a child is born, the elders take a silver leaf from the ancestral tree and hide it in the family shrine. When the child turns fifty and comes of age, the leaf is brought out, engraved with their name, and given to them to keep.

When my grandmother was alive, she took me to the shrine every autumn. She would wipe the dust from the leaf, run her fingers along its veins, and place it back in the box. She always said: ""This leaf grows up with you. No matter which forest you walk to in the future, the family tree will remember you.""

My coming-of-age ceremony was in three days. But tonight, when my family brought out the silver leaf, the name engraved on it was Lirien's."