You may know the names Arthur, Merlin, Camelot and Avalon. In the Outer Realm, they have endured as legends, softened and altered by centuries of telling. Here, they remain part of our history, preserved in old records and in the living memory of the lands that followed them.
After the Battle of Camlann, the mortally wounded King Arthur was carried across the water to Avalon, the Isle of Apples. Your histories remember that voyage as the end of his story. Ours remember it as the beginning.
Avalon was never the whole of the country to which Arthur came. It was the oldest known crossing between our realms, a mist-bound threshold and harbour at the edge of a far greater enchanted land. Beyond its orchards lay deep forests, mountain halls, hidden valleys and ancient rivers, where magic had never entirely withdrawn from the world.
In the years that followed, magical folk crossed through Avalon seeking refuge from the dangers gathering in the Outer Realm. They did not remain upon the island. From its farther shore they travelled into the country beyond, founding villages beneath unfamiliar stars, raising halls beside old rivers and making homes in places the Outer Realm had never once heard of.
Those settlements grew across the centuries until they became the Five Kingdoms.
As the need for sanctuary increased, Merlin, with whom you are no doubt familiar, strengthened the ancient boundaries between our worlds. The crossings did not disappear, but they became difficult to find and less willing to remain in one place. A path discovered beneath one moon might be gone by the next, while a doorway glimpsed in an orchard, beside a quiet lake or deep within a forest might not open again for a hundred years.
Travel gradually diminished. Letters arrived less often, visitors became rare and the histories carried back to the Outer Realm passed slowly into folklore. The distance between our worlds widened so gradually that neither realm could say exactly when correspondence had ceased.
Yet while life continued in the Outer Realm, life continued here beside it.
Kings and queens were crowned. Towns rose beside old roads. Children learned their letters, merchants opened their shutters each morning and archivists filled shelf after shelf with records of lives lived.
Perhaps the memory of the Five Kingdoms has faded to but a myth in the Outer Realm, but we have always remained close.
It seemed about time we wrote.