CoolSoCorey

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.”

 

Min Su-Jung took one shoe off, then the other, before cautiously stepping into the tent, attentive to not dirty her feet in the mucky environment. She hesitates for only a moment before lowering herself onto the cushion, sitting in a  relaxed manner. Her movements relaxed despite the discomfort of the surroundings. She sits with one leg extended to her side, it sits just in front of the other, whose knee hangs in the air. Her hand sits lightly atop her knee and the other is firmly planted palm first on the ground. A shallow smile reaching both ends of her mouth.

"What interest could you possibly have in a story like mine?" her words hung in the air a second, her tone was playful with a nearly unnoticable amount of reluctance.

She's making direct eye contact with the hag, her smile ever-present: "No matter, the silence must be filled somehow. You're next however." she shakes her hand towards the hag before beginning " My father... was a glorious war hero. He was... until he got injured and could barely swing a sword. And my mother... left. I suppose that’s how things go more often than not right? People leave when things stop shining, when the glory fades, and when love becomes mundane." She lets the words fill the air, her fingers tapping in cycles across her knee. "I grew up with a father who couldn’t see beyond his own failures, all his pride was left in that sword he couldn't swing. I learned quickly to stay out of his way. That was enough for me to get by." She would pause, unsure of where to continue. It's clear she doesn't talk about herself often from the silence that came over her as she looked towards the floor, gathering her thoughts

 "He would say things. Things a child shouldn't hear. But you learn, eventually, not to believe them... I learned how to stay quiet, how to stay invisible. I was like a bug plastered to the wall, trying to crawl into whatever hole I could find. Of course, I was no bug." She laughed a forced laugh, her eyes playing along "If I was a bug I would've been squashed ages ago..."

"We didn't have a lot, we--I never ate much, I-..." she gets frustrated and lets out an impatient sigh, now speaking much more directly and in a rush "Well one day he drank himself into a sleep he never woke up from, I couldn't stand that house and I left. And then I stayed with a merchant who I annoyed into feeling bad for me. Now I left that retched land in hopes for something different here in Aevos." that was all said in one breath and immediately after she paused to take back in the air she just lost, "Now its your damn turn." She waved an inviting hand towards the hag, palm up. "Fill the silence."