Northwest of Canterlot, perched high in the boughs of an ancient oak tree, there is a city of soaring towers and deep shadows. Its name is Keskiyönnon.

From a distance the city is all but invisible, dwarfed by the tree and its foliage. Few ponies remember the city's name, fewer still have seen it, and only two have walked its leaf-strewn streets.

To the unicorns of nearby Vanhoover, the tree is a minor tourist attraction. It has a forked trunk where lighting struck the tree when it was a sapling, more than a thousand years gone. On the east side, its branches spread over the headwaters of the Farrier River. Straight white limbs stretch toward the sunshine that dapples the water's surface. On this side, the tree reaches its greatest height, climbing over two hundred feet in the air and providing shade to colonies of trout and salmon who live below. On the west side, the tree's branches are gnarled and stunted, and its leaves have a sickly look.

In the morning, the tree's eastern half shades its western half, giving it less light by which to grow. In the afternoon, the peaks of the Unicorn Range throw early shadows across its boughs. While the eastern half of the tree grows straight and true, the western half is a tangle of branches, each fighting the others for the day's few precious rays of light.

For centuries, the unicorns of Vanhoover called the tree "The Oak of the Two Sisters", for reasons that hardly bear repeating. The builders of Keskiyönnon named the tree Tammen Tellervo, for their mythical ancestor who first led them to it. Little else remains of the Kainen Tellervo, the folk of Tellervo. Even their name is consigned to a few dusty scraps in the archives of the Canterlot library, neither seen nor spoken in many long years.

Much like the oak itself, the city is a place of opposing halves. It bridges the center of the tree, with long avenues criss-crossing from east to west—through the straight-limbed branches that climb over the Farrier's headwaters and through the tangled boughs that writhe beneath the shadow of the mountains. If a pegasus were to rest in the mountains' shade, perched in the canopy of Vyyhti (as the darker half of the Tammen Tellervo was once called), she might just be able to discern the outer towers of Keskiyönnon in the exposed branches of Torni, the tree's lighter half. Although these towers once marked the sole entrance to the city, they—like much of Keskiyönnon—have fallen into ruin.

But say, for a moment, that a visitor were able to enter the city. Say she were able to walk its streets like the Kainen Tellervo of long ago. What would she find there?

In the dappled sunlight of the Torni Oak, spiraling towers soar into the air. They are woven from carefully sculpted branches, and each year they grow taller. The tops of these towers are verdant explosions, as the braided branches unwind and seek the light. In the days of the Kainen Tellervo, perhaps the towers were less wild, more restrained. Only two ponies remember, and they do not speak of this place.

Between the living towers lie ancient roads of woven reeds. An earth pony, steeped in the lore of stones and structures, might call them bridges instead—but no earth pony has ever seen this place. The roads of Keskiyönnon stretch from tower to tower, often ascending or descending as they go. In many places they vaulting over one another in an endless game of leapfrog.

Unlike the towers, the roads are as dead as the city they inhabit. Below the tree, in the long months of summer, bulrushes grow tall along the water's edge. The Kainen Tellervo made a science of harvesting these bulrushes—learning which were lightest, and which were sturdiest; how best to gather them, and how to braid them. They mastered the subtle magic of anchoring their reed roads to the towers they grew, and of treating those roads so they could endure over the long years they expected their city to stand.

Scattered among the towers are the ruins of many smaller structures, low and flat, made from both reed and living wood. What these buildings were, who can say? Long years of the Torni Oak's growth have broken them apart and left them open to the spring rains and winter snows. Only their shells remain now.

In the middle of the Torni Oak, one tower stretches taller than the rest. It is thick at the base and tapers little as it rises. Once, this was the heart of the city—where the rulers of the Kainen Tellervo would gather to pass laws and sit in judgment. Along the outer walls, flecks of silver paint can still be seen. Glassless windows dot its circumference and mark out twenty-two stories climbing through the canopy. The tower's sole entrance faces east—toward the dawn and away from the darker side of the tree.

Inside this tower, twin staircases spiral upward along the walls. A single large atrium comprises the first floor, with a long channel rising up through the center of the tower and revealing the open sky overhead, beyond the treetop. The floor of the tower is tiled in colored stones. A hint of their long-ago polish can still be seen near the tower's edges, but toward the center dark stains spill unevenly across them.

Ascending through the tower, the upper floors are all a shambles. Some show rooms that are open to the central column, and wind has battered these over the long years since Keskiyönnon's occupation. Some show warrens of walled chambers, not exposed to the elements, but here too are ruins. Tumbled statues to Tellervo and her parents, Mielikki and Tapio. Sturdy reed-woven furnishings overturned and broken.

Back outside, a single road—wider than the rest—leads from the base of this tower into the depths of the Vyyhti Oak. Fallen leaves coat its surface, exposing few of the ancient reeds. Those reeds are pitted and scarred, despite the enchantments once laid upon them. Thin grooves mark where wheels once bit into the path, carrying tribute carts up to the high tower.

Few remain who remember Keskiyönnon, but once its name was known in every corner of the land. The elegant capital of the Kainen Tellervo, most graceful of all the equine races—so it was described in the homes of pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies alike. None could visit, but all heard its stories. The noble families, each with their own tower. The arenas and amphitheaters, where mares and stallions would perform for the enjoyment of their betters. The Spire of Governance. The Heart of the Tree.

This was the Keskiyönnon all ponies knew.

The wide road descends from the Torni Oak into the Vyyhti Oak. As it passes the border between the tree's two halves, the atmosphere changes perceptibly. Dappled sunlight gives way to thick, clinging shadows. Even in the gentlest breeze, the branches here creak and moan. It is not an ominous sound; rather, it is like the sigh of a pegasus, stretching her wings after too long on the ground.

The Torni Oak is orderly and proper, accustomed to the ease of abundant sun and sweet water. The Vyyhti Oak is chaotic and angry, fighting its twin for the resources it needs to survive.

At its terminus, the wide road empties into a circular plaza. The ground here is formed from twining branches. They are rough and uneven, leaving bumps and pits throughout the plaza—but they are also densely woven, with hardly a hairsbreadth of space between them. While the Keskiyönnon of Torni Oak is light and vaulting, dancing in the air, the Keskiyönnon of Vyyhti Oak is thick and solid.

Long rows of squarish buildings line the plaza, rough shapes that are hard to discern in the ever-present shadows. Drawing closer, it becomes clear that they are hewn from the tree itself, cut into the ever-present tangle of thick branches. Against some of the façades rest discarded scraps of wood—fragments of carts and wheels, long staves, warped boards that were once part of barrels before their bindings rusted away in the long years of solitude. How the wood has survived this long is a secret lost to the ages, but it gleams as if lit from within.

In some places, the wood is scarred and broken. In others, it retains the same smooth finish it must have held centuries ago.

The buildings themselves are small and windowless, very different from the towers of the Torni Oak. Many contain furnishings of simple elegance. Others hold small metal tools of very fine make, shining with the same light as the scraps of wood outside. Axes and planing knives, enormous shears and pliers.

There is no metal in the Torni Oak.

Between the rows of buildings, other branches twist deeper into the canopy. Some show signs of having been planed flat, while others are rough and covered in bark. Along all but one, more houses stand, running back and back into the shadows of the Vyyhti Oak. There is little to distinguish any of them.

The one remaining path appears newer than the rest—newer, even, than it should. Centuries have passed since the last of the Kainen Tellervo set hoof in this place, but the path is well tended, free of leaves and with ample space around it in the ubiquitous tangle of branches. The path spirals downward to a place far below the city, and at its end sits an enormous stone, buried in the bole of the tree. The path leads to a small hole in the base of the stone.

Inside, the stone is hollow, excavated by generations of laborers. The air is heavy with the musty smell of paper. Were a visitor to come here, there would be no light—but were there light, that visitor would see row upon row of books lining the walls of this chamber. She would be able to peruse volumes of the great Gryffon philosophers, translated into a long-forgotten script of dots and whorls. She would be able to learn what earth ponies knew of economics in the late antiquity, and read the cloud-poetry of the pegasus diaspora. Within the stone, all of these remain carefully preserved.

She would also see rows of tables filled with maps: the tangled limbs of the Vyyhti Oak and the towering branches of the Torni Oak, the broad avenues of Keskiyönnon, floorplans of the verdant towers and the Spire itself. She would see the dark stains on the floor, the jumbled piles of bone and cloth. She would see the battered helm of a guard captain and the pitted steel of a spearhead that was never cleaned.

The sharp cries for mercy would never reach her ears. The rank, mettalic stench of fear would never reach her nose. But perhaps she would be able to understand the anger that suffused this place, deep beneath Keskiyönnon.

Perhaps she would retrace her steps, revisit the squat homes in the Vyyhti Oak and see again the fine craftsmanship of the furnishings, so unlike the mean structures themselves. Perhaps she would ascend the long road to the upper city, noting once more the grooves made by carts pushed along the woven reeds. Perhaps she would return to the Spire and wonder about the stains arrayed across the mosaic floor, the tumbled statues of Tellervo and her kin.

Perhaps she would turn east, then—toward the headwaters of the Farrier River, and beyond it to Galloping Gorge. To the place where a princess had once banished the least of her subjects, for breaking laws they had every right to break.

The breezies are all that remain now of the Kainen Tellervo, and few of them know the stories of their ancient home. What stories survive are treated as fables for children, nonsense tales meant to teach common sense lessons. Perhaps it is best that they do not remember the truth—Keskiyönnon was dead long before it fell.