I think it's mandrake root you are thinking of. Mangroves grow in the swamps in the tropics. Easy mistake. :)

Cool that you made up the dolphin myth. It sounded really plausible to me that it was a "true" legend and I have done enough reading about origin myths and the like to not be fooled by fakey sounding ones. (I was ready to go and look it up!)

So...you already know how much I enjoy your work, and I agree with a review I saw below: This IS basically canon in my head now.
You said you felt this was weaker than your other stories, but I do believe your level of developement for Eilonwy, as seen here, is not just high but it feels extremely natural, and the overall narrative is full of pleasantly solid bits and conjectures.

All that's left, I guess, is believing that you will be as good as your word and not abandon this story, haha

This chapter appears to reveal who was behind the destruction of Llyr, if the last vision was a true image of the past. It makes sense that Achren would want to destroy a center of magical power allied to the House of Don and opposed to her and Arawn, and once she had Eilonwy and the Peladryn in her possession and knew Angharad was nowhere near Llyr, she might have figured that Regat alone wouldn't be strong enough to defeat a direct magical assault. She might also have attacked in hopes of acquiring the book of spells, not knowing that Angharad had taken it, and/or in order to make Eilonwy the last surviving member of the House of Llyr so as to clear the way for her long-term scheme of ruling through her.

That's a very sweet T&E moment; I like these places where you fill in relationship development that could easily have happened between the scenes Alexander gave us.

I hadn't thought of it, but I could definitely see BRIAN BLESSED (as he's invariably called on TVTropes, being the ultimate archetype of the Large Ham) in his prime as King Smoit. Both he and John Rhys-Davies might be getting a bit too old for the role at this point, though.

"Worse than sleeping on an ant-hill" is a particularly good Eilonwyan simile; I have to imagine that coming up with unique similes that are amusing without being utterly ridiculous is one of the hardest parts of writing in her voice. The bit about turning Taran's outgrown leggings into makeshift undershorts was pretty funny, too.

This is an amazing story! I recently started rereading the Chronicles of Prydain with my sister, and I love seeing a perspective of what happened with Eilowny during Taran Wanderer. I've decided this story is basically canon.
I am also in love with Rhun. Like, he is beautiful and I nearly cried when (spoilers for the High King for any people reading the reviews who haven't read it for some reason) he died. Like, he was finally becoming something and he was so excited for the future and had such plans (and now he has Maelona waiting for him too) and he just... dies? C'mon, Lloyd Alexander, c'mon!
Anyway, I love this story and will probably be back to read it again and again.
I also want to say I've read some of your oneshots and thought they were amazing as well.

I like that you have Eilonwy making some female friends. The fact that she and Achren are the only female characters who rate as more than extras in the books is probably the Prydain series' greatest flaw. I suppose the most charitable way to look at it is that the whole thing is written from Taran's POV, except for a few chapters in THK, and the princess and the witch queen are the only women who strongly impinge on Taran's attention during the course of the stories.

I think there was a tendency among twentieth-century fantasy writers who drew inspiration from Victorian-era translations and interpretations of Celtic, Nordic, and Greco-Roman myths and medieval legends like those of King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Roland/Orlando to assume that Victorian separation of men and women into separate social worlds was more prevalent in ancient and medieval times than it really was, because that was the way the Victorian writers misrepresented it, assuming as humans will that the customs of their own particular time and place were eternal and universal. LA was probably influenced to an extent by that literary tendency even if the Mabinogion itself did feature more prominent female characters.

I'm interested in your interpretation of the destruction of Llyr. Will the agent of that destruction be revealed later in this story, or in "Sunrise?" And if not, have you decided yourself who that agent was, or left it mysterious even in your own head?

That's a very good explanation for why Eilonwy knows the things she does about Llyr, despite not remembering any details of her own life before Spiral Castle. I'm kind of chagrinned that I never thought of it before; we know that Achren's magic can mess with people's memories, of course, since she did it after re-kidnapping Eilonwy in TCoL. If that was her MO the second time she abducted the girl, why wouldn't it have been the first time as well? And this is exactly how I'd expect that to work, too: forcing someone to block out all of their episodic memory before a certain time wouldn't fundamentally change their personality, or erase the declarative and procedural memories of facts and skills they learned before the block.

I wonder if "Taran could have beaten any of them" is Eilonwy embellishing her memory of the boy she loves, or simply an accurate assessment of his prowess at this point? I'm guessing the latter, actually. By this time Taran would have grown to his full height, and would be in excellent physical shape from the various strenuous activities inherent in farm life; he'd also have trained enough with such warriors as Coll, Gwydion, and Fflewddur that he would be a formidable swordsman.

The mention of kelp reminded me of an old photograph of me with Amber Kerr; I posted it on Facebook and tagged you.

I finished this last night, and I just wanted to say, excellent work. I've thoroughly enjoyed getting back into the world of Prydain after not having read the books in a while. I thought you did a good job of fleshing out the story while still staying in character. I like how you (and Lloyd Alexander) make Eilonwy an interesting, relatable character who, although she is in love, doesn't seem like she exists solely to provide a love interest for the lead. Take the romance away, and she's still a compelling character, is what I'm trying to say. I'm inspired to try harder to do the same in my own novel I'm trying to write, which is a fantasy/adventure/romance. After reading the Princess Diaries I'm inspired to add more depth to my own female protagonist, while still keeping the fun romance.

I only recently started using a fanfic account and I wanted to tell you that I love this story so much! Please continue!

Looking forward to the next chapter. :)
I stumbled across these stories by seeing you favourited in one of the authors whom I follow.

Pleas update:)

Oh, gods. That was intense. It was still pretty awesome though :)