flourishings

You’ve just arrived in a swampy, dim town. As you look around, your gaze is met with shacks and cabins. It smells of rotted wood and wet moss. You 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?))

A dim room in a crumbling town. These sights were ever common in her travels, and seemingly ever common still within her future. Very little lays before her now- once a comfortable life of routine, now filtered down to nothing. She waits, seethes, longing for the recession of the tide to come back to shore, alongside her long-gone luck. A little tent with a rumored teller .. her life had come to the whims of whispers. Anything. God, anything, would be reprieve.

"I find there to be no use of a story, when the past is of no use to me," she starts, seating herself upon the gestured cushion. Though, seeing that the crone did not move nor offer information, she exhales. "Alright. I .. come from a humble house. No land nor title. But, a local lord set his sights upon me, and I .. could not handle such pressure. I ran. A .. foolish, stupid thing to do-- the rash actions of a child, but I.. I cannot bring myself to blame the girl I was. It is shameful, is it not?"

Rosalind gives a stuttered breath, heavy, tired-- before turning her watery gaze back to the hag. Almost burning, behind those irises.

"Your turn. I dare ask you of your uses to me. This is all I have remaining, but it is yours, if you might point me to a prosperous future."

With a quick hand, a leather pouch is pulled from her cape, and a meagre contents of coin spills between the two.