Fait Accompli: An Unwilling Tutelage

[Seperallis]

The raps of her knuckles upon the heavy planks of the door reverberated throughout the void beyond before echoing back to Elke, her words reflecting along the length of the corridor to either side of her and jumping along the walls until the found freedom through the tall open windows. An echo clawed its way back to her greatly diminished, the great heavy timbers whispering the young woman's would-be greeting into her ear. No movement, no reply, not but the slightest stirring at her confident commands but that from a lazy breeze to aimlessly waft through the opened windows and, so trapped as much by its own errant curiosity as by the heavy fortifications that encased it as to grasp at the ceiling and wall fixtures before settling and swirling along the floor in its slow and silent demise.

An apt metaphor for a similarly aimless interloper, were one so inclined to such thoughts in the face of such disquieting quietude.

As much as it seemed no workers occupied the establishment, so too did the silent reply of the hinged sentinel before her give an impression that its guests partook of a similar absence. Such a revelation might make some sense, would one think about it, as surely anyone in town on business would surely be about completing said business in the middle of the day instead of sitting upon one's thumbs in a decidedly business-less sleeping chamber, a deep recovery after a long night of over-merriment aside. Even the most hermited author, so in love with using his thesaurus for creating rambling flowery texts of little substance such as the example before you, would find more inspiration for scrawling within his notebook out amongst the local scenery instead of cooping himself within such a creatively sterile environment.

At least, this facade held for several seconds before Elke became aware of a light chuffing behind a above her. "Mold! Pfff...mold, that's rich, rich! I'll have to use that one sometime meself, yes, meself," came the words so light that one with lesser hearing might have mistaken them for the usual chittering of a rodent. A small red squirrel perched itself high upon the wall, its claws sunk tight into the grains of wood just below the gold-inlaid designs of the finely detailed crown molding so as to keep it from falling from its vertical perch.

The tiny woodland creature fixed a single black eye upon the inn's latest visitor. "But what of this interloper then, interloper?" Its bushy red tail jolted slightly to punctuate the question, its mouth moving in a fashion natural for a squirrel but wholly impossible for forming the squeaky words that emanated from it. Its nose twitched similarly to its tail as it caught a lingering whiff of some scent; its face scrunched in an expression of displeasure most alien to any normal rodent. "Trollchild interloper, pretending to belong, ha! Belong, so naughty, so naughty. Heh heh hee!"

[Sal]

Small as it was, Elke expected the accusatory chittering to have come from a young child hanging from the rafters by his knees. Maybe the innkeeper's boy, or the sons of one of the workers who found this village's paid childcare department to be lacking and had brought the child to work out of necessity. The red-tufted ears and bushy tail, however, weren't quite anticipated.

But they were darling.

"A talking squirrel?" Elke mused, big grin reflecting her intrigue over this curious little fellow.

This was not the first talking animal she had come across. In fact, before her abandonment of her scholastic career back home, she'd taken an entire course on the behaviors and physiology of mystical creatures. The forest, as she recalled, was a hotbed of magical energies, and its residents were often not what they appeared. Squirrels, foxes, toads and raccoons were quite often otherly spirits who had donned a fur coat to blend in with their simple-minded neighbors. It was said to be another form of evolutionary defenses, like the way the plumage of the pheasant would blanch snowy white in the winter to help it hide itself from predators. In a village such as Myerleigh, into which the forest had infectiously encroached, the woodland kin would always be sure to adapt to the manmade structures.

This one in particular seemed to have made itself at home in this inn.

"I'll have you know I'm no troll," the mageling chuckled, crossing her arms over her chest and quirking a brow in a most bemused expression. "I'm just an adventurer on a mission who happened to have a run-in with the kind and pungent haberdashers down the street."

The beast's nose, scrunched as it was now, must have been more sensitive than the girl's. Not that Elke's own nose had grown any more tolerable of the very swampy odor rising from the fibers of her clothes like vapor from a summer puddle. Poor bush tail would not be able to smell right for a week.

In an attempt to win over the animal and salvage the scent glands in its nose to facilitate better conversation, she felt a sweet present was in order. A bit of the mushy plum, sticky with warm nectar and with a saccharine scent, would surely do the trick.

"How long have you been following me, Little Red?" she asked, charm-and-bracelet decorated arm rising up from her overpacked satchel to branch out in offering. "Do you belong here, yourself? A helper of the inn-keeper, maybe?" She extended the fingers not engaged in holding the fruit outward in a perch. "Or," she began more hopefully, "is it possible that you're the familiar of the guest in one of these rooms?"

[Seperallis]

The squirrel-thing chuffed, or perhaps did a sort of light sneezing sound that might have resembled a chuff were it not so diminuitive and incapable of such chuffing, after Elke mentioned her run-in with the two trolls down the way. Maybe it knew of the trolls of which she spoke, and so commented upon the aptness of her description, maybe the creature used the act as a kind of commentary upon her insistence that she was not the troll-child she most obviously must be, or maybe even it was a simple act of clearing the thing's throat, or nose, or whatever little face-oriface might be causing it such discomfort; simple, easy answers were probbaly the right ones, anyhow. In any case, the creature did not elaborate upon its sentiments, opting instead to merely watch the habits of this mageling troll-child inn-truder.

Now dubbed Little Red, the woodlands creature tilted its head so as to better view its subject with both of its beady black pinpricks. As Elke's hand slid into her pouch for the sticky mess of a sweet treat, Red leaned in expectantly, knowing that whatever this person produced, it would either be incredibly great or incredibly foul...or both, as in the case of the overripened, half-eaten fruit with which Elke attempted to tempt it.

"Mm, possible? Possible, yes, possibly of help to this inn, possibly not, I cannot say, though I can say with certain possibility that troll-children would certainly spend less time with the conversation and more time with the smashing, yes. So a troll-child this one is not, it is true." Red retorted as it veritably lept from its perch upon the wall, scuttled acros the floor, then proceeded to wriggle its way up the other wall and closer to the perch Elke created for it. Surely no ordinary squirrel would dare to venture so close, and even the spirits and familiars would proceed with a great deal more caution than this beast seemed capable of conjuring when presented with a stranger; either this thing had long since deduced the girl to be harlmess, or that it could quite handily escape or avoid any such harm regardless of how vulnerable it made itself.

In any case, Red, now perched firmly upon Elke's outstretched hand and nibbling eagerly into the succulent offering, proceeded between bites, "Belonging is funny, yes, quite an amusing turn! Who is to say the building is not the transgressor, and we the ones to belong? The trees say it is the town that does not belong, and the town insists the trees do not belong, yet is either in the wrong? Possibly, mmm, quite possibly, just that it is a probable possibility that I am a familiar of some great and pooooowerful wizard, oh yes! Yes yes, just as possibly, I might be a fae taken the form of a tree-rodent...or, or, quite possibly, this one is simply an ordinary squirrel, hm? Perhaps this one has gone bad and is not speaking to a squirrel at all but conversing the meaning of infinity to a plum in an empty room; as they say, the simplest answers. Hah hah heeeee, so fun are possibilities!"

Having finished its tangent, the pace of the rodent's eating slowed considerably as it held the fleshy fruit mass by its pit. It paused a moment, regarding Elke, and continued, "Mm, yes, and equally possible, is that this one, for all her talk of familiars and guests, is on the hunt to become the unexpected visitor of some backwoods mage because she read ina book they might be a fun thing to behold. Yes, possibly."

[Sal]

“You’re pretty cryptic, whatever you are, you know?” Elke scoffed, too amused by the little silvan beast to be perturbed by a lack of a direct response. Cloyingly sweet plum juice seemed to now be matting the fur around its tiny forepaws and down its heaving little chest, and a clump of fruit pulp seemed to be clinging on to its whiskers, trembling ever so slightly as the tiny thing spoke. Realizing all at once that the entire scene was just plain cute, the mage-in-training quickly quelled the intensifying urge to poke a finger into the creature’s soft belly to feel that adorable little roll of warm pudge, desires of a teenaged girl’s pure curious bliss.

“But you’re right,” she added, shooing away her own silly thoughts. “Well, kind of rude, though; backwoods has some…” pausing to think for the right word, Elke went with, “negative implications. At least where I’m from.” Perhaps things were different here. Indeed, the way the forest all around them here seemed to be lazily dominating the tiny town, the way the people here labored purely under its yawning mercy, the way buildings of solid stone and forged iron crumbled like sandcastles when besieged by wispy taproots - maybe being backwoods was an appraisal of the luckiness of one’s circumstances here. Perhaps being backwoods meant one’s life had not yet fallen to the crafty green dragon whose leafy scales and thousand bark-armored legs gave it the most innocuous of appearances, allowing it to lumber into town under the guise of being a provider: shade-giver, fruit-bearer, wood-donor.

A whole army of treefolk, I bet! In her mind, the monsters in their perfect camouflage advance not even a quarter of a pace every day, slowly creeping in. A painfully slow shuffle followed by several hours’ repose, as if the effort was strenuous. A bustle so slow, so slight that the villagers either don’t notice or are able to put off the inevitable takeover in their minds. In another year or two, this whole village will probably be trampled by them and they won’t even know what hit them.

But then again, who was to say that this wasn’t the back of the woods? Perhaps the forest dragon-army-monster moved backwards, and not forwards. Maybe on the other side of this sprawl, the living forest was receding, leaving meadows, clearings and bogs in its wake. Maybe its gaping maw, disguised as an opening between two clusters of trees, spewed flowers and grasses over the decimated bits of civilization and infrastructure it crushed, returning the land to its former state.

Backwoods, then, suggested a blindness to one’s coming troubles. Or at least proposed that a person was too pigheaded to accept their inevitable vanquish.

Regardless of the directionality of the forest, backwoods was almost certainly an insult, though just a mild one.

Bringing herself back into the present moment - squirrel on finger, taunting suggestion up in the air - she focused her attention back on the quadruped.

“Anyway, you know Ne-- ah, this mage? You’ve heard of her? Can you take me to her?” Giddy grin growing wide across her face and feet nearly dancing in place with anticipation, Elke felt positive that she was on the verge of breakthrough. All her hard work - the vast expanse of land she’d put between home and here, the blistered feet, the wading through frog-infested swamps, the sleeping on prickly briars and getting bitten by a menagerie of insects - was all about to become worth it. But cautious to work with something that was beginning to feel much like the djinn folk she’d heard of - a race of wish-granters from a distal lakeland with a penchant for taking things far too literally - she felt the need to continue clarifying. “Will you lead me to her?”

And of course, as she’d already experienced in a quaint little haberdashery today, a little buttering-up never hurt.

“If you can lead me to her today, Little Red…” The girl crouched carefully, taking the picked-clean pit and setting the squirrel on the wood floor, then crossed her arms thoughtfully around her knees.

I definitely have to put this little guy in my journal. Look at those cute little feet!

“If you can take me to her, I promise I’ll leave you a much better treat than a half-eaten plum before my time in this village is over: the best pastry in this whole village, the juiciest berries, enough nuts to last you through hibernation - whatever you want!”

The logistics of obtaining such goods on her austere budget were of no concern in the face of such possibilities.

“How about it?”

[Seperallis]

A good thing indeed that Elke possessed the hindsight to clarify her request to the talkative little squirrel-thing, thereby saving herself from yet another long and winding exploration into the realms of possibilities and capabilities. Not that the rodent would have minded the the exercise that such a rambling journey would provide, but even as Elke might want to spend the next several hours watching the cute creature wiggle its paltry pudge and spout high-pitched nothings to its sole audience member, surely she prefered to catch her ultimate prey and not let the hunt continue for longer than necessary and risk yet another disappointing revelation that her tarrying once again allowed the mage for whom she sought give her the slip.

Especially not now, as close as she found herself and as over-worn as she found her shoes.

Unfortunately, the a little buttering-up can go a long way to derailing one's plans in the face of a tiny being with a penchant for distractability. At the offer of so great a reward for bringing this untroll-child this mage-person - specifically the infinite question of whatever it wanted - Little Red's black beady eyes doubled in size and seemed to go wildly out of focus, it's jaw slightly agape. Regardless of any actions around it, it stood still, brushy tail swishing in a slow rhythm while it stared deep into the infinite realms of possibility, the vast expanse of the cosmos expanding before its consciousness into the ever impending realms of "whatever it wanted," far beyond the realms of affordability for poor Elke's pocket

Much less the realms of attainability for a young mageling with only an elementary knowledge of the natural sciences.

Thankfully, the squirrel's temporal forray into the forever and beyond only lasted a moment to the lesser beings, and only a few moments passed for Elke before the little thing became a fuzzy ball of excitability while running circles around the girl's legs. Chittering away in a lightning string of gibberish that Elke had no possibility of understanding, the ball of fur bolted down the stairs, slipping under a crack in the rear exit, and running along what the locals optimistically refered to as pathways through town.

While keeping pace with any ordinary squirrel would be an exercise most frustrating in their penchant for making erratic twists and turns to try and avoid pursuit and get some place safely away from whatever followed it, Little Red made things significantly easier - if still quite tiring - by hopping in place and waiting for Elke to close the gap between them before darting off on the next leg of the chase through town. Chittering all the while, the little beast ran through alleyways, across lawns, atop/under/around/through walls, and between people as it raced its way through the remnants of Myerleigh towards what Elke could only guess was the requested mage.

What Elke expected to find at the end of this chase was anyone's guess after spending several months in her search, but the building to which the Little Red raced looked much like most of the others in town, though much smaller. Now on the outskirts, meandering stream passing within meters of a small two-room cottage that probably would have siddled along the town's outer wall, were the wall still standing and not anything more than a wide path of rubble through which the water of the stream bubbled on its way to places more exciting.

Clambering along the vines that transformed the small hut into a verdant veranda, the squirrel gave Elke an insistent, "Shhhhh," as she approached. "Behold," it continued in tones all-too-hushed, thanks to its size, as it hung above a cracked window, "the wild druid in her natural habitat!"

One had a clear view of a desolate room that served as an all-in-one kitchen, dining, and living quarters...or at least used to serve such a function at one point in time, given the absolutely barren landscape that lay within. The as-yet intruders peering through the pane found what few furnishings that remained - a timber table, a couple simple stools, various half-rotted crates and a bucket - cloaked themselves in visible layers of dust and dirt, no doubt accumulated over several decades of disuse. The basic cold stone hearth on the far wall sat empty, the last few remnants of ashes long since blown to far flung corners of the room by the heavy seasonal downdrafts through its adjoining chimney.

Amidst the mess, someone violently disturned the accumulation of ages on the floor, as several smallish footsteps led to and fro, into and out of the adjoining room. In the center of the room, where all the steps converged, the grisley form of a man lay lifeless on the floor with a two-foot long heavy iron gate spike hammered nearly down to its curved end into the center of his chest; his tabard and pants ragged from rough use, the mans features seemed slightly bestial with his nails long and his teeth slightly more spiked than human teeth otherwise should be. The man-sized pool of blood in which this un-named soul lay looked as if someone had been dancing or thrashing about in it, and the snarl on his face coupled with the wildly contorted angles of his wirey, lifeless limbs told a tale of a hard-fought struggle.

Beside this grisly scene sat a smallish, fair-skinned woman sitting upon one of the half-rotted stools beside the corpse, absent-mindedly rubbing a bloody-soaked along arms caked and splattered with the sanguine element, the smattering on her face only a few shades darker than the hair that surrounded it. Wearing a heavily-soiled smock, she sat cross-legged and hunched forward over a bucket of murky water, and the pensive look she gave the corpse in front of her, lost deep in thought, gave her something like the visage of a town butcher contemplating her choice of victim and how best to carve him for her customers.

Sans the knives, perhaps, though a heavy, bloodstained wooden mallet sat beside her feet.

"Ooooh, she caught him! Heh heh! Good."

[Sal]

In her entire life, some eighteen or nineteen orbits around the great daytime star, Elke had seen exactly two dead people.

The first had been a few years prior when she'd accompanied her father on a trip into the center of the High Kingdom to attend to the corpse of a recently passed nobleman. A young woman of not more than thirteen years and still trying to decide the course her life would take at the time, her parents had suggested she shadow her father on one of his assignments. Though doubtful of her abilities in herbalism, Elke had acknowledged, as her father reminded, that she did carry an extensive knowledge of all things flora from her days spent in the forests around their home. She could just as easily identify which berries were at the golden-orange peak of their sweetness as she could distinguish between two similar-looking leaves to name which would make a refreshing balm for bug bites and which would leave a painful, blistering rash when applied topically (deductions of her own unprofessional experimentation).

And so, persuaded by her own cleverness, she'd packed her day bag and caught a carriage into the heart of Sidgard with her father. It had happened in autumn when the toadstools reveled in the damp, cool days and when the leaves were streaked every shade of red and purple. Not hailing from the city herself, but rather the very fringes of its borders where on maps ink outlines of the High Kingdom tended to run off the page, it had become clear to her why the need to bring in herbalists from the outer regions was there: the only greenery here seemed to have been methodically planted by men, save for the occasional weed that sprung up defiantly amongst the roots of ornamental flowering trees and a few walls covered in creeping ivy that had been deemed decorative and left alone. Farmlands stretched the distance between her home and central Sidgard, then decorative flower gardens, then only flower pots and planter boxes in town. There was no way these people would know the blossom of a ruby heart from that of a dragon's tongue, let alone poisonous herbs from medicinal.

The room into which she and her father, the man shouldering a pack akin to a doctor's kit, had been led was dimly lit. Elke had presumed this was out of respect for the deceased but at the time found the forbidding of the sunlight into the room to be depressing; she'd shivered in the dark, dank atmosphere. The corpse was stretched out on a grandly furnished mattress, a thin white shroud covering his face and his hands having been positioned so that they rested crossed over his belly. The gaunt contours of his face poked through the fabric to reveal what appeared to be his already skeletal form. A group of consorts of various ages, sexes and ranks had huddled together a respectable distance from the body, black veils pulled over weepy eyes and noses chapped pink from sniffling. Some must have been family, the young woman had noted, but the more stiffly-lipped men with the shiny silver buttons and the fiery red piping around their cuffs must have been the nobleman's colleagues. Their brows had been furrowed and lips drawn tight in something of forced concern while one of the women in the room became hysterical, clawing at the sag of her aged bosom with once red-lacquered nails that had been chewed off to the quick. Streaks of black mascara trailed down her pale-powdered-then-re-rouged face, down the waddling, floppy skin under her chin, dripping into the endless black sea of her corset that strained at the weight of her years. Elke had stared at her as if she were some interestingly vile beast in a zoo exhibit.

Having only ever had ties with her nuclear family, this would be the young woman's first funeral experience.

With orders from her father to brew that poor dear a cup of tea with a notch of widow's root soaked in (Elke had bitten her lip to prevent a knowing smirk; widow's root was a known and very powerful sedative capable of putting even one of King Sidgard's famed draft stallions out for a three hour nap), the preparations could finally begin. The herbalist had opened his bag, pulling out a canvas pack that could be unrolled not unlike a scroll. Inside had been a mix of medical instruments and an herbologist's measurement tools. Though the girl had seen them many times before, it had only been when her father was sharpening or cleaning them. Seeing them in use was a different matter entirely.

Good that the grieving widow was well and passed out thanks to the tea, snoring loud enough to jiggle her second chin and drooling a puddle already.

Looking back, she was not certain whether her parents had called the ordeal a "funeral" because this was what a funeral truly entailed or if the reason could have been that they doubted the appeal of an "embalming process" in the opinions of a preteen girl. Regardless, Elke hadn't fully expected to see her father so coolly gouge a scalpel into the dead man's wrists to drain his blood. Her nose wrinkled up in the anticipation of some sort of foul odor that never came as the man's arms had been allow to flop down over the edge of the bed so his cold, sappy blood could collect in a basin, her father meanwhile having involved himself in removing the garments.

The rest of the procedure had gone normally, or as the girl presumed must have been a normal appointment. Elke had gotten to see human organs for the first time, and there had been the smells that she'd initially expected, but it wasn't any worse than when she would watch her mother prepare dinner's boar or goose. Her father had prepared herb-infused-oils to maintain the corpse and to prevent autumnal mold growth before the burial, then cleaned the work station until everything was sanitary, handed the sleeping widow's proxy a tin of balm and instructions to apply it daily in light of a suspicious looking cluster of rashy warts he's found around the deceased's nethers - and to share with any other woman in the court who seemed to be having discharge or itching - and the Korraidhins took their leave.

The second time Elke had seen a dead body was about seventeen seconds ago - just about long enough for her brain to process what she was seeing and to send the panic signal to her lungs to let out one of the shrillest screams she'd ever managed.

Immediately, she slapped her hands over her still-gaping mouth and dropped like a hail stone under the windowsill.

Oh no, her mind prompted as her body made itself tiny and pressed her into the exterior wall of the house to contemplate, what if she saw me?!

Funny, she might later think, that being seen by the target whom for weeks she had been pursuing was now the worst possible situation at the moment.

But surely, surely there was an explanation for the hulking form sprawled on the floor in a suspiciously dark red puddle. Maybe a handyman who had slipped and spilled oil for the door hinges, knocking himself out cold upon impact? Of course! The place certainly looked as though it needed work, at least if the cobwebs and dust were any indication. The doors were probably too squeaky for someone as reclusive as her to focus on spell casting.

That had to be the answer... But was it?

And furthermore, who knew if this was even the right abode? Could Elke really trust a squirrel - a talking squirrel, sure, but still a tree rat at heart and mind - to provide an accurate report of where Elke's person of interest was staying? Little Red seemed that he was maybe a few apples short of a bushel, and it was too dark inside the house to have gotten a very good glimpse of the occupants.

Two things were certain: the mage needed to figure out if she had cornered the correct target in this house, and she needed to find out if said target had murdered a man.

Summoning all of her courage, Elke raised herself on the balls of her feet until she was just barely able to peer over the windowsill. To an outside viewer, she would have looked squirrelier than Red himself - straining on her tiptoes with her nose shoved against the wooden window frame, trying her best to be inconspicuous.

The inside of the house was still very dark with just enough light to turn silhouettes into definite shapes and colors. There was definitely the body of a huge animal-like man stretched out on the floor, unnaturally still. His chest most certainly was not rising and falling the way an unconscious man's chest would do, and there was undeniably a big dark red puddle under him. While Elke was sure there was an explanation for the scene inside the little bungalow, she was beginning to think the explanation was the most obvious: this guy was dead.

Wide, grey eyes slowly rolled from the pile of man on the floor to the spot where the second soul in the room had been seated. Lips tightly pursed to prevent any additional yelps from slipping out trembled ever so slightly. Knuckles gripping the weathered wood of the window frame went white in unconscious vice squeezing.

"Nevina...?"

Suddenly, a twig behind Elke snapped.

This was it. Her idol of several months was actually a bloodthirsty murderer, and after a weeks-long journey to find her, she was going to murder Elke, too. The student wondered if she'd have time to journal her final thoughts as her time on Andlosheim fled. At least a note to her parents, footnotes for Nevina's biography, an unfulfillable IOU to Little Red for the snack of his dreams....

Mind blank with fear, she turned from the window, falling back on her rump, put her hands in the air, and declared the only thought she could muster. "Maintenance! I'm here to check for mold!"

[Seperallis]

The scarlet-haired elf was a murderer, in fact. Technically; the cause of the formerly-thrashing-but-now-dead-and-quite-exsanguinated half-man on the dusty floor of the hovel most certainly met his end at the hands of Elke's pursuee just as the incriminating scene might suggest, but the circumstances surrounding this eventual "unfortunate" outcome were wholly an isolated incident so that the first thoughts that crossed her mind as she gazed down upon the cowering child - one stained hand on the rusted door handle and the other still clutching the bloody rag - were not of slaughter of this most helpless trespasser, but of confusion and worry as to why and how someone would be in such an isolated part of Myerleigh.

To explain, one would have to follow Nevina back several days, to the first moment she entered the village.

That day began much like Elke's, with the two wanderers taking the same route into town. Much like today, the sky remained clear and warm, a scorching late autum sun beating down upon anyone outside of shade while it freely rode its charriot through the cloudless heavens; only a slight breeze flowing between the trees with the path to gently pushed Nevina towards her eventual destination.

Unlike Elke, Nevina entered Myerleigh with purpose under the pretenses of an invite of the town's local magician and elder, who apparently heard that she was headed towards the village's general area and sent ahead for the cultist in order to perform a service on behalf of the community; being obligated to perform the service as a part of her cultly duities, Nevina of course accepted the task, on condition that she be provided food, lodging, and a small "donation" as a gesture of thanks for services rendered once the problem had been addressed...as is only fair, of course, for even wandering Samaritans must have a means to acquire necessities from those who cannot pay their debts in goodwill. The townsfolk, eager to be rid of their problem, acquiesced.

Said problem? Certain people in the village had sighted a figure lurking on the abandoned and sparsely populated edges of the settlement, a gangly beast in men's clothing that preyed upon the smallish livestock herds kept on the towns outer limits. Some thought it might be a werewolf, while others believed it a feral vampire of sorts, but all townsfolk agreed that the entity would have to be removed, as its presence disrupted their herds and posed a possible danger to the townspeople; a small group had already tried to confront the creature, but its ferocious attitude kept them from driving it off, as several of them suffered serious claw marks and bites from the encounter.

Nevina spent the next two days investigating. While she never saw the beast herself, she saw several of its clues; enlarged footprints with long nails, claw marks on the edges of wooden posts and building supports, "leavings"...yet no actual sighting of the beast. She did, however, notice a pattern of behavior, that all marks and clues pointed toward the creature making its home on the furthest fringe of the town, at or near the babbling brook that carved its way through one side of what used to be the village's perimeter. Why here, she couldn't possibly know the reason other than the fact that a few of the buildings still provided decent shelter while being far enough from the population as to provide safety and solitude...but such dwellings were all too common on the edges of Myerleigh. Something had to have attracted the beast to these specific dwellings, of all the possible places to live and hide.

Then, while crouching barefoot in the stream on the third morning and watching the little minnowfish nibble at the crevices between her toes, she had an small idea. A hunch. However, she couldn't test that hunch without confronting the creature; if this beast did indeed cause the wounds to a group of men and escape without harm, then it would be quite dangerous for a lone, small elf to do the same.

And so Nevina spent the third day in preparation.

Early on the morning of the fourth day, the same day that Elke would eventually make her way into the settlement, the red-haired elf laid her trap for the beast along the water's edge just as the sun began to turn the black of night into a misty deep purple-grey: being sure to mask her own prints, she faked the prints of a lost goat walking to the creek, and then into the smattering of abandoned huts. With a donated charm made of mud, grass, mohair, goat bladder and goat blood, she left a scent behind her, doing her best to occasionally emulate the distressed wail of an injured lamb before leading the trail into the back rooms of one of the better-looking dusty old hamlets.

And there she waited, occasionally repeating the distressed wail from the corner of the hut that couldn't be spotted from the exterior.

The creature eventually rewarded her patience by turning up at her building a little later, when the sun had nearly poked itself above the line of trees that rounded the sparse former meadow. It scratched at the walls testingly, its distorted face lingered long over the cracks as it took in the smell of its prey, before moving along to the door. Long spindly fingers carefully, gingerly pushed aside the moldy timbers of the half-closed portal, its nostrils flaring as it followed the scent, its ears perking at every wail from the "goat." It turned its head slowly towards the sound in the corner towards its meal, towards a Nevina who waited with the bloody charm dangling in one hand and her flute gripped closely in the other.

Fully inside the room, door pushed to behind it, eyes not yet adjusted to the change in light, realization just started to dawn on its face that the shadowy shape pushed up against the corner of hovel did not match the sound it had been following, when-

~ ~ "Maintenance! I'm here to check for mold!"

Nevina's confusion turned to concern when she realized what this girl, cowering before a woman in a splattered smock and carrying a blood-soaked rag, might be thinking. This stranger crouching in a futile attempt to be small and insignificant and close herself away from one who held the power to end this trespasser in one fell swoop of a fantasied butcher's axe, below the tattered panes of a window that opened upon the grizzly scene of a warped man's dying struggles to free himself from an unseen force as his assailant pounds an iron spike through his living, breathing, beating heart. The death throes of a desperate beast. Oh child, she thought, you shouldn't have been here.

She started to reach out with the hand that wasn't gripping a sopping mess of a cloth. She wanted to apologize, to console, to let this person know she would not come to harm, but she was interrupted by the high-pitched noise from the roof, as a little red squirrel chittered in laughter at the dichotomy of Elke's seemingly dire situation and the nonsensicalness of her statement. To Little Red, perched upon the edge of the mossy roof, the absurdity of the entire scene felt almost surreal, and he had to steady himself several times to keep from falling the many feet to the ground in squirrelly laughter.

Nevina stopped short at the sound, as it grabbed her attention. She knew that beast, and the knowing made the feelings all the stronger, as her remorse and embarrassment swiftly became annoyed anger at what the little beasty had done. "Con-...You-...ugh!" She eventually shouted at the squirrel after initially stumbling over her words, "Gods, Forlag, how many times must I tell you to stop harassing the local girls!"

The little creature continued to chuff giggles to itself as it scampered away to avoid the potential wrath from the exasperated Nevina, crossing the peak of the roof and out of sight. The elf had no intention of moving against him, though; her attentions were back on the young girl cowering below the windowsill. With a sigh, she dropped the rag and crouched to a knee, falling on even level with the girl.

"I'm so sorry you had to see that. What are you doing-...no, no, I'm sorry, I shouldn't ask that. I'm sorry...I won't hurt you. What's your name? I can't hurt you."

[Sal]

There was a very high amount of volume being presented with the expectation that Elke should process it all instantaneously and formulate an appropriate response.

Instead, with the con artist formerly known as Little Red scampering off with a giggle and Nevina approaching with a concerned look, Elke managed a sort of hesitant strangled-goat bleat as the pale color of her eyes flicked back and forth between the scenes.

'THAT'S Forlag?'

'Oh, wow, oh, dear, it's Nevina! She's so cool! Oh wow OH WOW!'

'Wait, why am I not freaking out? She just killed someone and--'

'Forlag is a squirrel? How can an animal be a proprietor?!'

'OH, NO, SHE'S SO COOL! I have to look like a total toad fart right now! I have to say something!

Quickly popping up onto her feet, shooting up from the leaf-litter so quickly even that she managed a few mites of air between her feet and terra firma, Elke announced, "I'm fine!" Her landing, just clunky enough to shake the dead foliage from her skirts, did not distract her from her quickly elevating mood.

Finally, at long last, the might huntress has captured her prey, and while her minor startle might have put a dent in the cool exterior she'd hoped to feign, her soaring spirits kept her mind on something else.

"And you!" she marveled, eyes sparkling with girlhood wonder. "You're Nevina, aren't you?" Not needing a response from the pity in question, Elke squealed - this time in delight and not panic - and began first dancing in little circles, then bouncing, and then a combination of the two until she was bopping up and down, round and round. "I've been trying to find you! Yes, yes!"

With energy to outmatch Forlag Bush-tail himself, Elke practically vibrated as her racing thoughts forced their way out as words. "Oh, I have so much to ask you! You have no idea what I've been through on this trip - or even just today! But it's worth it because I found you! You can help me with my research and I can finally write about you!"

[Seperallis]

Nevina's expression once again went from compassion to confusion as an increasingly excited Elke jolted upright and increasingly failed to contain her apparent glee at having found her person, even with her apron stained in blood as it was. She never before bore witness to such an overjoyed outburst of emotion at having seen someone she had never seen before and with whom she held no prior interaction whatsoever; the typical response from such people generally involved apprehension and unease, not a glowing display of energetic praise.

Not to mention the sheer jittering energy with which she bounced around in a happy dance most unbecoming of anyone hoping to salvage any sliver or shred of dignity out of having acted a toad fart.

Most unusual were this strange girl's words, or what of them she could understand within the hyperactive stream of conscience she spouted forth. This young lady was apparently not from the area, judging by what she mentioned of a trip, and evidently was some kind of student, given that she needed Nevina for some manner of research. Most disquieting, though, Nevina noticed that this person knew her name despite having never met and apparently came to this place, of all places, specifically seeking Nevina out for some purpose or another; this couldn't - rather, shouldn't -  be possible, for Nevina keenly knew her place in the world, and though the Cult and its work held a certain amount of far-reaching fame in these parts of the world amongst the lower castes for the works they performed for the benefit of others, Nevina held no powerful fame to warrant such a...bubbly hunter.

Unless...no, she couldn't possibly be here about that...

Nevertheless, this young traveler knew a great deal more about Nevina than Nevina knew of her, even down to her name - a potentially dangerous predicament in certain situations. With an uneasy I can barely follow you half-grin, Nevina held up her recently-cleaned hands as she stood and looked up at her vibratory visitor. "Hold on, slow down, deep breaths...Now, what's you're name?"

* * * * *

It was at Nevina's behest that the two eventually found themselves once again within the quiet confines of the Cozy Canker, the early afternoon sun painting the empty room of the dining facility in multicolored extra-rainbow hues from the stained glass along the tops of the windows. The room remained as vacant as the first time Elke set foot within the hall, it still apparently being much too early for the evening revelries and socialities to begin, the town's paltry peasantry still much too busy in making their modest living; this was a boon for the Mageling and the Mentor, who had the entire space to themselves.

Along the way, Nevina had done her best to answer some of the more pressing, if not slightly inane of Elke's bubbly inquisitive inquiries: first, that Forlag was in fact not a talking, hyper-intelligent extra-dimensional supersquirrel, but an old mangy druid who had settled in and taken up the role of Town Magician and elder statesman - "woe be to these unfortunate people" - for the ramshackle hamlet. Second, yes, the hair is real; Nevina never really understood why this was a pertinent question for so many people, or why the vibrancy of its coloration was such a surprise to some. Thirdly, no, Nevina neither enjoys nor appreciates the notion of being lifted, carried, or otherwise raised off the ground in a physical manner and swung about like some child's ragdoll; this was an even more absurd, and more common, notion than the last, and Nevina was neither enthused or amused at Elke's ridiculous notion of her being "so cute."

Forlag, however, was quite the opposite, entirely amused with Nevina's bemusement and Elke's enthusiasm, chittering from rooftop to rooftop in glee at their ridiculous pairing.

Once inside the establishment, however, the furry fiend disappeared, and Nevina took a much appreciated reclining position in one of the  padded oaken chairs, the trials of the early morning finally catching up to her less-than-spry aging body; despite all appearances, a 300+ year old body is still a 300+ year old body, after all. The elf had cleaned herself before returning, loosing with the bloodied smock and instruments and gathering her few possessions together, the cold corpse of the "murdered" man as well as the ramshackle hut that became his tomb set alight to save the village the unpleasant ravages of carrion diseases.

"First of all," she directed to Elke as she released the most appreciative sigh of her life as she sank deeper into the padding of the seat, "How did you know of me?" It was an honest question; Nevina generally did what she could to keep from drawing much attentions to herself, especially when it came to name recognition, since there were many *cough*the Order*cough* who held an undue fear and hostility to unaffiliated mages. "What is this research of which you spoke?"

A smiling bag of wrinkles, presumably Forlag, came out of the kitchens bearing a silver platter, upon which sat a kettle of albidium root tea and a collection of tiny cups. Standing with a heavy hunch and barely over four foot, the roughly-robed Forlag set the tray upon the table, before waddling back into the kitchens.

[Sal]

While Forlag was not actually a squirrel while in fact possessing the ability to transform into one, perhaps the more surprising revelation was that the ornately decorated interior of the Canker and its wares seemed to have been the product of Forlag’s own machinations. For the outlandish, slightly grizzled, perhaps lecherous old coot that he was, the druid had did have a rather nice taste in interior design. As far as Elke could determine, his artistic tastes didn’t really align with the more overt part of his interests. The subtle acorn pattern engraved into the chair railings, however, did not go unnoticed - a symbol of his squirrely nature regardless of his species.

Clever, Forlag.

On their stroll to their lodging, or at least what had seemed like a stroll in comparison to the laborious journey she’d just undertaken, Elke was warned not to call Nevina “cute” or any synonym of the word, not to lift Nevina, and generally to avoid thinking of Nevina as a child, even though she was very tiny…

Elke had agreed to the terms and conditions, for she had come here on business. She did hope, however, that they would at least be friends by the end of this. Nevina was, admittedly, colder than Elke was used to or expecting. Perhaps it was an elf thing, perhaps it’s what happens to those who spend their time wandering mostly in solitude. The life of a wanderer had seemed appealing to Elke, and she considered this venture her first foray into that lifestyle, but she did secretly wonder if she would be able to trade the kindness of the local farming folk amongst which she’d grown up in exchange for the overly cautious, critical gaze of a new village hesitant to welcome a strange mage.

Maybe. Every town had to have its Forlag and too-helpful Troll-salesman, at least.

Following Nevina’s lead, Elke, plunked herself onto one of the chairs, dropping several stones’ weight in bags, rucksacks, and purses and pushing them under the chair as much as possible to keep them out of the way. Freed of her burden, she sighed, arched her back in a deep stretch, and sighed again. The light patches on her tunic formed by where her packs always rested told of how filthy she was and how desperately she needed to wash her clothes and herself. Certainly there would be time for that, although Forlag might make her actually check the lodging for mold now that she’d made the offer.

“First of all,” she heard Nevina sigh, drawing her attention back to her and away from the setting around them. Elke thought at first that the sigh might have been one of annoyance, but it seemed that Nevina was just making herself at home, too, getting nice and comfy on the furniture. The girl knew that she shouldn’t think of this mighty and powerful mage as adorable, but the scene was… well… cozy, to say the least.

(It was adorable; Nevina looked so small in the chair.)

“How did I know you?” Elke repeated, just to make sure she had the question right. “Oh, right, the research! I learned about you in Intermediate Magical Histories,” she recalled with a smile, which wavered as her face went into an expression of thought. “Well, not about you, per se, but about h--” Her eyes widened a bit as realization washed over her. “Um,” she gulped then, leaning in very close to Nevina, as close as possible without leaving her seat, and just barely whispered, “heresy.” Elke looked almost as if she feared lightning would strike her down at the word itself. The dark cloud of vitriol that had surrounded it in text and in spoken word at her university had been rather hard to shake. Still, Elke told herself, if this was the path she was going to walk, she’d need to overcome the fear of a simple word when she, herself, was going to be learning the art and lifestyle.

Even worse, she felt like the word was an insult to Nevina. “Heretic” was no small moniker; it was a heavy burden to bear, and it insinuated that the bearer had done something wrong. It was a curse more than a title, more repelling for many than pustulotic disease.

“Not that I think you did anything wrong!” Elke blurted, the phrasing an extension of her thoughts more than of the dialogue. “I mean, we just- we just learned about cults and using the power of higher beings for magic. The Nine Winds happen to come into conversation. Even in our part of the world, its name is known.”

Elke paused to pour herself some tea and to sip from the delicate porcelain cup criss-crossed in leafy pewterwork which formed the handle, then swirled around the light brew and watched the leaves twirl in a tiny whirlpool at the bottom.

“You probably want to know why I sought you out, too, right?”

It almost felt embarrassing to say it now. Back home, Elke had a friend, Roanna, who’d once taken fanatical interest in a certain band of travelling musicians. Roanna had become so enamored that she once ran away from home to travel into the city and beg the group to let her go with them. Talk of their classmates was that she’d demonstrated her singing skills to them. Unfortunately, it was known that Roanna had a singing voice akin to an angry blackbird, only a bit more repelling and a lot more jarring. When she’d been rightfully rejected with a “funny girl, go on home now, we don’t have an open spot for you” and returned to her worried-sick parents, Elke had gotten to hear the story and had chided her for being an idiot. To the very day she left home, Elke had not stopped poking fun at Roanna and reminding her of the time she ran through the night like a lunatic after The Roaming Harmony.

How the tables had turned.

“You probably already figured it out,” the mageling murmured, “but I… Well, see… The thing is that I was kind of… sort of hoping that you could, you know, maybe…” Elke stared very hard into her tea, hard enough that her gaze was probably burning a hole through the porcelain. “I guess, teach me how to use heretical magic?”