Fey-drians Wall (Sorry! Couldn't resist...) never really bothered me. I always figured they might have created other enclaves in the world, ones that play on the similarities of the pre-Abrahamic religions such as found in Norse belief, early Germanic, the Balkans (between Greek mythology and some of the Roma stuff that I'm not too familiar with), just as such things appear in Pictish and Celtic cultures as the lands beyond the Barrier in Brythan represent, though the last Great Struggle before the Barrier booted the fey out of Wales. I actually rather assumed they had more than the one enclave, myself. There was a reason the Green Man appears in so many places. Grin!

Even if you keep the Barrier as it is (which I think you might should reconsider and do; it's very tidy) the notion of multiple enclaves rather elegantly does away with the issue you point out.

Still, I'm very much in lockstep with the idea of the Earth being sentient, as were so many of the cultures cited above. Its a world-wide notion common in so many religions trammelled and brushed aside by the Abrahamics.

This next bit is more a ramble illustrating why I like your thoughts about the earth itself being the culmination of all intelligence in the story.

It's fresh in my mind. I just had a reminder of the theologic problem I have a couple days ago when I was asked whether I had considered the hereafter by a friend of mine who is an American Christian, you know, the type who goes to the "mega-church" devolved from the Southern Baptists.

Anyway, to his credit he really didn't bat an eye when, rather than giving him the opportunity to invite me to his church as I now assume he expected, I told him of my loathing for exclusionary religions as the purveyors of untold suffering in the world, that I was more of a Deist than anything, and a bit about the journey.

When I got to where I also find rational and reasoned the notion of the Earth and all its denizens to have spiritual significance, and indeed the idea of Mother Earth deserving her respect as that which nurtures us and from whence we all spring and to which we all return, then I hit the stop with the guy. He said, "Well now that's just ridiculous nonsense." That's where the line was, and Abrahamic arrogance revealed in all its glory.

It strikes me as an odd place for that line to exist, where a Christian shows the bullshit card, odd until one considers the Abrahamics believe the possession of sentience and souls is reserved only for man, a belief of almost unfathomable human arrogance.

I'm not sure he expected any of it though, for another bit of that same exclusionary arrogance is the assumption that when a Christian asks if one has considered the hereafter, the response can only be either having embraced Christianity or not thought about it at all. So convinced in their righteousness, the idea that yes I have and I have come to a completely different conclusion after a lifetime's discernment just doesn't compute.

That last paragraph is off the track a bit, but getting back to the idea of Mother Earth as a being to be loved, respected, and cared for as the more ancient religions understood is one I can easily embrace. "The real intelligence is the planet itself" is a good notion in the times your story is set, even though that notion has been denied in Abrahamic religion. See where that supremacy of man shit has taken us ever since?

Anyway, I'm good either way you go as both concepts (or a blending of both) give opportunity for a strong underlying theme to any story you set here, that of the evils man commit upon not only each other but on all creation in the name of God.

Or is it really in the name of Man?