1eoo

Your character has just arrived in a swampy, dim town. As they look around, their gaze is met with shacks and cabins. It smells of rotted wood and wet moss. They duck and step into a tattered tent, illuminated by a series of candles suspended in the air. At the back of the tent, an old hag raises her head, “What brings you to this dingy town? She begins, then pauses to study your face—”Ah, it’s you. I’ve been expecting you. Sit,” she gestures at a cushion, “Tell me your story.”

((How do you respond?))

Qi Zheng closes her eyes and breathes in deeply, sitting down and dropping her backpack of wares to her side. As she opens her eyes, she smiles gently "Story is always such an interesting way to ask about someone's history," she opens her backpack and produces a tea set, and she begins measuring out ancient tea leaves "Stories can be made up, history is fact." She places the tea in a Gaiwan and turns the cap off a bamboo thermos lined with tin, "I will tell you the story for now, if you'd like." She flashes a smile as she fills two cups with hot water from her thermos, dumping them out quickly, heating the cups in preparation for the tea.

"There once was a girl from Yong Ping, this girl wasn't much like myself. She was angry and impulsive, she was like a boar who had been backed into a corner." Qi fills the Gaiwan quickly and watches it intensely whilst speaking to the old woman. "She was misguided, led astray by urchins in her youth, a petty thief." After a matter of seconds she fills the two small cups quickly, and then dumps the tea out, she continues - "She was left to rot after a break into a home was intervened by guards. All alone in two prisons: physical and mental." She fills the two cups once more, taking a break to bring it close to her face, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply as she did upon entry to the tent "Out of darkness, however, there was light!" She takes a sip and opens her eyes "A kind stranger took pity on her. Seeing a child no older than 12 in both of these prisons made him reminisce on his own youth. He talked to her -every day- and gave her his journals." She prepares another steep "These journals were full of depictions of plants, of energy, and of life -a stark contrast of the prison she was in- with descriptions of tastes, colours, smells..." She pours another cup of tea "She learnt much from him and his notes, but couldn't interact with them until she left. Once she was released, she couldn't find the man again, left with one notebook labelled ZC and a newfound knowledge of tea and spiritual energies."

"That's the story, anyway." She chuckles, grinning with a smile only a troublemaker could muster, a glint in her eye "But I can assure you the history isn't too different..." She finishes her tea and packs away her set, but leaves a cup filled with tea for the old woman "You can keep that one, it's on me."