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?))
Asuka cringes at the smell, but is quickly enamoured by such mystic lighting choices. Carefully listening to the woman, but a little hesitant to simply 'tell her story', she sits down, shifting a little to assume a comfortable posture, and ultimately deciding there is no harm in telling said story.
"Ehm...It's quite simple, really. I was born abnormally large, and while I was expected to die of malnourishment as the village could not sufficiently feed me, I managed to live. Though...of course, someone of my aberrant nature would be shunned and teased my whole life. "Deka", they nicknamed me, simply meaning "big". I was undesirable as a wife, unfit for farm work, and clumsy, so...I was driven out. One less mouth to feed, my parents said."
She trails off at the end. Asuka may have been wrong about there being no harm in telling said story. Her face dons a bit of a pensive, disassociated look after recounting her painful history, sifting through just the outline of it so as to not make herself into a downer, but it seems that was all she needed. But she begins to grow in optimism.
"However! I came here, in search of a new beginning. I heard rumours of mystical arts, and I wonder if something could, perhaps...fix me. Make me normal. So that I could then return to the village, too, maybe...but until then, it seems I will have to embrace the new lands before me, and find a way to fit in here."
Her hands clasp with tentative wonder as she daydreams, in stark contrast to the melancholy demeanor she has exhibited so far. But she quickly returns to her senses.
"I apologise, it isn't much of a story...much less one that I can tell with no issue. I simply want to become...a new person. I don't want to dwell on the past."
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