Cranekiss

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?))

Ardea glances around with a look of surprise, even though there is no one else who could possibly be spoken to, then fixes her wary eyes back onto the hag. "Me?" she says, the shock clearly reflected in her voice. "You must be mistaken. I'm not—" she pauses, struggles for words. In the dark of night illuminated only by the feeble candlelight, in this tattered tent hardly capable of shielding from the cold — she suddenly feels awfully exposed. How exactly could she explain, without embarrassing herself, the spur of immature passion that brought her here? She continues, quieter this time, "I'm not really anyone special." 

The hag doesn't seem to get the message. She only gestures wordlessly at the cushion again and — well, there's little choice Ardea has, unless she wants to go back out there in the cold. She sits down crosslegged and as she does, she takes another good look around the tent. It is then that she realizes that the candles are not being supported by anything, but rather hovering above them, dripping dangerously with molten wax. She swallows. This woman... she is magical, that's for sure, yet strangely, Ardea feels... at ease, around her. Perhaps just another extension of the same foolishness that brought her here, the same foolishness that urges her to open her mouth, and obey the witch's request...

"Really, you must be mistaken. I'm not anyone special at all. I'm the daughter of a family of farmers — my whole life I've been raised cursed with my only companions to be cattle and sheep . A mundane upbringing, no? It's all I've known my whole life, the endless stretches of grass and crops, the stink of hay. And I could never shake off the feeling that — that there has to be something more to it all. It all has to account for something. There has to be something greater out there... and I could feel it, standing in the fields sometimes, something calling to me. I know it sounds crazy, but it was like a pull, deep in my chest.

She shrugs, a half-attempt to mask her shame in nonchalance. "So I left. I packed what I had and started walking, and I guess it brought me here. In the middle of a rotting town, and a witch tells me she was expecting me. I don't suppose you could at least tell me why?"