abellerose

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?))

Example: 

Violet hesitates at the tent’s entrance, her boots squelching in the mud as she ducks inside. Her braid clings damply to her shoulder as she scans the room with suspicion and curiosity. The air smells like mildew, which makes her nose crinkle. Her fingers twitch near the sheath strapped at her hip, but she lets them fall when she sees the old hag seated within. She eyes the cushion but doesn’t sit right away.

“You’ve been expecting me?” she asks in a low, wary but steady voice. “That’s not usually good news.”

Her gaze meets the hag’s with a flicker of curiosity as she finally lowers herself onto the cushion. Her posture is tense but contained—every muscle alert. The flickering candlelight dances across the black of her uniform, glinting off a small silver insignia near her collar.

“My story?” She almost laughs, but it’s a dry sound—humorless. “It’s written in blood and ash. I was meant to be a scribe, buried in books and scrolls. But fate doesn’t ask for permission. I’ve survived war college, betrayals, and loss. I’ve made choices I live with every day. But I’m still here. And if you truly know who I am…” She leans forward slightly, voice sharpening, “then you also know I didn’t come to this place by accident. Something drew me here. So what is it you know that I don’t?”

The old hag, hunched beneath layers of tattered shawl and bone charms, stares back at Violet. Her eyes, clouded but not sightless, shimmer with the unnatural gleam of someone who sees too much. A crooked smile tugs at her lips, revealing teeth the color of old parchment.

“You carry storm and shadow in equal measure, girl,” the hag rasps. “You walk with death clinging to your shoulders and fire lodged in your chest. No, you didn’t come here by chance. And yes…” Her gnarled fingers twitch toward a wooden bowl at her side, filled with blackened herbs and crumbling paper. “I’ve been waiting since the wind whispered your name. You weren’t meant to fade behind ink and parchment. You’ve changed the shape of things.”

Violet’s jaw tightens at the hag’s words. She says nothing of the dreams that have haunted her, of the memories that resurface without warning.

The hag plucks a small, wrapped bundle from her robe and places it between them, her cracked finger tapping its top once. “Open it, child. And ask yourself if you’re ready to stop surviving… and start becoming something more.”

The candlelight flickers, casting long shadows across the tent’s walls. Violet stares at the bundle but doesn’t touch it yet. Her voice, when she speaks, is barely more than a whisper.

“Then let’s stop talking in riddles,” she says. “What comes next?”