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?))
Surprised, Ildris looks around the room, like she’s trying to find a way out. But she doesn’t move from the old rug she first stepped on. Her shoulders hurt, and her eyes feel heavy. The old hag keeps staring at her, as if she can see right through her.
“My story… it is simple,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper, as she walks to the cushion. “It is one sentence in a chapter. I’ll… I’ll tell you now.”
The cushion shifts under her weight, and she feels the candlelight warm her bloodied arms.
“The world hasn’t been kind to me,” she continues, looking at her boots. “Ever since I woke up under the forest canopy, I didn’t know a mother, a father… nobody. I don’t remember anything before that awful headache.”
She takes a breath. “After surviving the forest, I learned not to be afraid of breathing. I’ve met people who could read me like a book. I’ve met people who would sell my life for a coin. I have the ones who accepted me, with whom I roam around for wisdom. It has been like that for years. But I’m still looking for where I came from… and now, we cross paths… You and I ended up here.”
Ildris sticks her pale hand out from under her hooded cape, searching for untold future and her forgotten past.
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