The transitional forest between the Krenglelan foothills and the Walking Forest proper, the Tenekee Woods are what hunters call "honest woods"—dangerous, yes, but predictable. The rules here are the rules.
Character
Unlike the Everwood to the west (a single immortal organism) or the Walking Forest to the south (which moves), the Tenekee is simply a forest. Individual trees grow, age, and die. Leaves fall and rot. Predators hunt prey according to comprehensible logic. For travelers exhausted by the supernatural forests that dominate the Westwilds, the Tenekee offers something rare: normalcy.
The woods are old-growth, dense with massive oaks and beeches whose canopies block most sunlight. Game is plentiful—deer, boar, rabbits—and the hunting is good. Lacirean hunters work the Tenekee for meat and timber, grateful for a forest that doesn't try to kill them in strange ways.
The Watched Feeling
Despite being "normal," the Tenekee has an unsettling quality: the persistent sensation of being observed. This is the Walking Forest's influence bleeding northward.
The Grayls don't often come this far into the Tenekee—the sounds of hunters and woodcutters pain them—but they watch from the southern treeline. Their patient wooden attention extends further than their bodies do. Tenekee hunters learn not to make eye contact with the forest edge at dusk, when the light plays tricks and the trees seem to have faces.
Occasionally, a Grayl does wander north, following a beloved tree that has seeded in the Tenekee. When this happens, the local hunters simply leave the area for a season. There's no fighting a Grayl; there's barely any communicating with one. You just wait until it leaves or until its tree dies.
Dangers
The Tenekee's dangers are mundane but real: wolves in winter, bears year-round, the occasional bandit gang using the woods as cover. The northern edge brushes against the Krenglelan Range, and things come down from the mountains sometimes—cave cats, displaced wyverns, once reportedly a young lindworm.
The forest also serves as a buffer between civilized lands and the Walking Forest. Travelers heading south are advised to stock up on supplies in Lacire and move quickly through the Tenekee. Lingering too long risks an encounter with something from deeper in.
The Everwood's Edge
Where the Tenekee meets the Everwood to the northwest, the forest changes abruptly. One step you're in normal woods; the next, the ground is spongy with undecaying leaves, the air thick with spores, and the trees have that unsettling sameness of a single organism. Locals have marked the boundary with old stone cairns—warnings, not borders. Nothing stops the Everwood from spreading except the patient work of fire and the forest's own strange preferences.