As to nightmares – people get used to “home” being solid, safe. Any event that challenges that framework – a house fire, an earthquake, a tree falling through the room – is therefore highly traumatic. So insofar as the wood elves view their forest as home… well, yep.

Also a forest fire of that intensity in a living healthy forest means someone really wants it to burn. I think a resident would be so shocked it was actually burning, because there’d be no indication that was going to happen in their magic, healthy, living forest. This would be a nightmare for the elves, and one I’m not sure they’d even have proper systems in place to combat. The idea of being trapped in a burning forest :shudder: I don’t like it I’ll tell you that much.

This is certainly not the first time I experienced that while reading Guilded Age. Kudos to John Waltrip for really playing the medium to its strength.