By Word or by String (Julian)

[Wrenmae]

Spring, Day 49, 511 A.V

Night had once held a sort of hushed majesty for the storyteller, a woman of blankets which hid the world from her children. She was cruel, in a gentle way, a gauze of shadow across the eyes of all who walked beneath her moon, her stars. In that respect, all were equal in the night...or would have been had no one developed nightvision.

Even so, as a human such feats were beyond him. Like the rest of his ilk, he squinted inch by inch through murky evening till at last he found a place to lay his head. It had been this way since younger days and would have continued to be, had he not come to Lhavit.

Here the city slumbered during the day, streets eerily vacant in the sun-bleached morning. The eye of the heavens found Lhavit unprepared and unwilling, and when it had set in frustrated red anger, they filled the streets to hail the moon.

It rose like a silver coin, caught in the velvet of the Night Mother, and gleamed there...the scornful eye of an all seeing blackness.

Wrenmae awoke with the evening, wiping away the sleep from his eyes and blinking at the comings and goings around him. People of colors and shapes, granted equal obscurity by the evening, glided street to street as ghosts. The moon pressed against their skin, penetrated it, glowed them from the inside. The storyteller wondered if he might be the same.

Little money in his pockets, Wrenmae had elected to sleep in the streets. Between the shadowed abscess between two buildings he had slept beside his horse. Weaver hardly approved, waking Wrenmae by day with impatient ferocity. Despite his lack of rest, he could only chuckle. Weaver believed the world existed in balance...understood balance. Sleeping the entire day was foolish, a sort of indolence barely tolerated by an already energetic breed. Ket bore the brunt of his ire, shaken from sleep periodically and mewling her contempt of the larger animal. Had their positions been reversed, Ket might have trampled Weaver with uncaring hooves...but Weaver was not the kind to hold grudges. In fact, he was proud enough to believe both Wrenmae and Ket existed to serve IT...or at least it gave that impression.

Now, in the fanfare of evening, Weaver stared at the crowds murderously, his glowing hide attracting their eyes. Wrenmae rode him through the crowd at a trot, running his hand along Ket as she sat on his lap. The tabby regarded everyone with equal ambivalence, her eyes only lingering on the bits of metal glinting in the moonlight. She too felt at odds with the place, tired during busy hours and finding sleep elusive while the city was silent.

Wrenmae shared her discontent, but maintained himself regardless. His eyes were birds too torn between places to land. They leaped from face to face, following the curve of lips and eyes, reading body language, and catching the tattered ends of conversation. He was the drunk in a fountain of alcohol and too torn on what to get drunk upon to drink at all.

Reigning in the horse near a corner junction, the storyteller slid off his mount and donned his wide brimmed hat and cape. The persona of the storyteller was a thing built of years and a hundred works in progress. Combining the right amount of flair with talent was always the entertainer's trial. Wrenmae had picked up the hat from a traveling merchant in Alvadas, the cape in his travels to Lhavit. Hidden by both hat and cape, Wrenmae could be anything from the helpful bartender to the surly and decrepit elder.

Standing among them, he offered himself to the market, to their wandering eyes...to their purses and imaginations. He offered himself to failure, to success, to the hidden aspects of oral tradition held clentch-fist by generations decades before him and likely those decades after.

"Ladies and Gentleman," he called, pleaded, begged, enticed to them. Some, mostly the barkers and those already busy with their own concerns, did not turn their faces. The customers however, unused to such a bold declaration for their attention, turned to regard the tale giver with raised eyebrows, "Please give me a few moments of your time to weave a story...for your pleasure or displeasure."

A few smiled, Lhavitians eager to hear more spoken word, especially as a new festival neared.

Many did not heed him, but some would listen

Some always did.

Wremae spoke for them.

[Julian]

The air was electric with anticipation. Julian didn't need to speak Lhavitian to know that the excited conversation buzzing through the city around him was mostly about the Star Festival being held tomorrow. He'd seen a few of the natives, especially at the Inn, trying on their new costumes and masks, a tradition he'd only recently learned of in the past few hours from the Common-speaking tourists and natives. As he passed through the brightly lit and dazzlingly colored evening streets, he stopped occasionally to inspect the structures being assembled for tomorrow's festivities. Though only a foreigner himself, it was difficult not to empathize with the delighted mirth and the spirit of celebration that seemed to fill the night with new life. Of course it had occurred to Julian that it might be fun to acquire such a costume himself, but before this year, the Star Festival had only been some far off, foreign tradition he'd heard odd stories about. He'd spent enough time in Lhavit embarrassing himself as he failed to adequately adapt to the city's customs. Putting on a costume for a celebration he didn't fully understand or properly appreciate would honestly feel more like an insult to Lhavit's culture, and the Star Lady not to mention. Julian had never actually decided how he felt about gods, hailing from a city that didn't have any. To him, they were legendary story characters made real, existing in some reality far removed from his own. He might like to meet one, someday. Understandably, the Shooting Star Inn was packed to capacity with tourists from as far off as the Ravok and the Konti Isle. He'd spent some portion of his night there, playing his music for patrons at their tables, but as the night went on, the crowds became louder and more dense. The cello's song could barely become noise above the wail of spirited conversation. It came to the point that Julian realized that his services weren't well needed there, but the night was young. Insomniac days were spent busying himself with private things - writing, reading - which he simply did not have the appetite for in the evening. So, he'd bring his cello somewhere else. To the streets, he'd thought. Perhaps amuse a few tourists. As he carried his cello through the bustling city, however, he became surprised to find that it was his attention that was suddenly stolen by an unfamiliar voice shouting in Common. A young man with a beard a few days old, and clearly foreign, threw his plea to the crowd. A half-smile possessed the features of Julian's face. A storyteller? How quaint. And why not? It had been so long since Julian had heard a richly crafted tale. This could be refreshing. So he drew in, pulling his cello with him as he found a place to stand close enough to hear the man more easily - and far enough to give him the space he'd need for dramatic gesticulations. Anchoring the large instrument in his arm, with its bow tucked between its strings, Julian leaned on the cello as he gave the stranger his attention. His ice blue eyes searched for the young traveler's. How could one so young, he thought, know stories that could move one's heart? In all likelihood, he didn't, but Julian had a weakness for this sort of thing. He was curious enough to give the man a chance. "A story?" Julian returned the storyteller's call. "And what sort of tale is this, friend? Love and betrayal? Faith and perseverance? Victory against the odds?" At the very least, this might serve as a pleasant intermission in his night.

[Wrenmae]

Faces peered at him from the crowd, their visage marked by speculation and curiosity. Some appeared dismissive, expecting the old man with a cane and a head full of life to pour. The quintessential tale weaver of lore was always wizened by some hardship of life, and sometimes the mark of experience came with the warping of body.

Wrenmae showed no signs of wear, no scars or wounds visible on his body. He was, as many would see him, a new being brought forth from some cultured area of little danger. To that respect, the boy couldn't argue. Alvadas had cared for him as though he were one of their own, raising him in the manner they saw fit. He'd never set foot outside the Kalea range and his inexperienced was written in the smoothness of his skin, the brightness of his eyes.

Nevertheless, no legend began as such. Birth, origins, prologues, everyone had to begin with one foot forward and one back. Wrenmae was no exception, the result of mystery and unknown origin he stood poised with story on tongue and eyes on the faces watching. Fail or succeed, he could not afford to hold back.

A man called out to him from the crowd, framed by dark hair and holding a large instrument close to his chest. The boy was familiar with lutes, but the instrument seemed gargantuan, like something a giant might strum. The observation was disconcerting, especially as people were rarely all that they seemed. Danger always held a line of curiosity for the boy however, and instead of recoil from the image of a monster beneath the guise of a man, he pushed against it, consumed it, made it a part of his mind...his stories.

"Love," Wrenmae answered with a smile, "Love put to a test."

Taking a deep breath, he began.

"There was a young couple, newly wed in Syliras. Their friends and family gathered from all corners to attend the celebration, remarking the two could not be more perfect for each other. He, a young and star-eyed man with land in the countryside and she, a beautiful woman with a myriad of skills and a highborn pedigree. They were happy together, or so she always said, and he was happy to see her smile, a good man at heart. They designed to travel to Alvadas...to see the wonders they could see." Wrenmae paused, wrapping the cape around himself as if from some sudden chill. His eyes poured over the onlookers, eager for their curiosity. Some nodded, knowing that little was as it seemed in the city of illusions. Others seemed to lose interest, tired of stories without names or historical reference.

He continued, sending both hands out wide and hurling the cape behind him in a flourish. "They were attended by a young girl, a servant, who had eyes for the man and his gentle nature. She had shared his prescence for years, unspoken, holding her love secretly.” The crowd stared at him, a collective silence forming at the edges of their lips, “She had eyes for no other, thus she was lost, as the lovestuck often are. The journey was long, but the handsome husband and his beautiful wife saw many sights, enjoying every one. Each night they lay together and stared into each other's eyes. He stared at her to see the heart that beat for him, she stared to see herself reflected in his eyes, perfection in the face of perfection… Love of such a seamless union, of life, of youth, of vanity." Wrenmae's voice dropped an octave, slipping down beneath the murmur of conversation around them. He stalked around the circle, eyes challenging someone to call the love untrue, or to silence his story. There was an element to exist within, a moment of time where Wrenmae was a God, spinning histories which may or may not have happened.

"Who could call their love untrue? They would have died for each other, he for honor and love and she to preserve that perfect union…and thus they called their love the purest. For in all their travels they had never seen a more beautiful pair than themselves.” A question was forming in their eyes, but what of the girl, they seemed to ask, “The servant girl never spoke of her secret desires, comforted by his comfort, warmed by his warmth, and in doing so, told herself she was happy.”

It wasn’t the kind of story one told from experience, rather imagination. With such a short life, Wrenmae would not bore them with the dredged facts of his own solitary existence. Perhaps one day he would tell tales of himself, but somehow it felt dirty to do so, a self important gesture of pride too repulsive for the storyteller to fathom. His stories, till now, had been the idling of daily daydreams and muddled facts. Myth? Legend? They were someone else’s stories and he would not tell them without first recognizing the originator. Tale weaving was an art, and one rarely lucrative in a world of facts. But for this instant, for those who listened, he was beguiling a world similar to their own. Fantastical, amazing, coincidental, but a world worth living in at least for the touch of divine, the breath of oddity. Wrenmae was not important, had not slain some immortal beast, held council with gods, nor claimed a noble origin. He was an adopted orphan from the streets of Alvadas, and his voice was rarely heard.

In this way, he was heard.

People listened

In this way, he existed.

“They came upon the gates to Alvadas, amazed at the speaking head etched into the rock.” Hurling the cape up over his shoulders, framing his own thin face with the black folds of fabric, he spoke out with a booming voice the same words which had been spoken to him last he returned to the city, “You have come in search of the City of Illusion. Tell me, stranger, why are you here?” A child giggled, small face peering up from the waist of a protective father. He smiled, but did not chuckle. The story was far from over.
“The young man spoke to the stature, saying that they had come ‘to see what can be seen’ and upon the end of his answer the face smiled. The noble lady was disturbed, but the servant girl stared in wonder. Never before had she seen such sentience, such wisdom in a rocky face. Never an answer, only a question. Never wrong, ever curious. Of mixed minds they entered Alvadas, entered the City of Illusions.”
He paused here, smiling sheepishly. It was the first time he had told this story and wasn’t sure of its effects or design. Perhaps they would like it, perhaps they would not. It did not resound with the same force of a life story, but perhaps it would entertain…at the least he could try to entertain.
“The city of illusions is a place of truth and lies, and some are often mistaken for the other. In arrogance the two had assumed their love the purest, and so the city would test them…as it tested many others. Of mixed minds they entered the city, and of mixed minds they would leave.” Pausing briefly to take a drink from his water skin, Wrenmae gauged the crowd. Some had lost interest, pushing onward to find brighter beauties in the city. Others, including the fellow with a cello, watched with marked interest…either fading or growing as the story continued. Smiling to those, holding no ill will to the ones who had left, Wrenmae continued, his voice dropping a few octaves. “The lady of upstanding beauty turned to see her husband, finding he was gone. Imagine her concern as others pushed by her. She was alone save the servant girl in such a strange place! She became aware of a tugging sensation and looked beside her, finding a wrinkled old man clutching at her sleeve. He was a wizened creature, every inch of his skin wrinkled and pruned by years of life. He looked up at her with tremendous effort, trying to speak through a toothless mouth…but all that came out was gasps.” Wrenmae bent over, hunching the cape over his back and gnarling his fingers. He reached out for a woman watching, she pulled away in fear, laughing nervously. Smiling, he dropped the guise and stood upright again “She leaped away from him, repulsed by such an aging begger. In his eyes she saw herself, but reflected from a face of everything she denied, everything she feared. Leaving his side she scurried into Alvadas, seeking the beautiful husband she had come with. The servant girl remained, also seeking her love, but it was kindness that moved her to help the elder find a place to sit. She pitied him for his age, repulsed by her mistress for her treatment of him, and retrieved him some tea with her own money to give peace to his shaking weariness. He looked to her for thanks, confused and despairing, but when she caught his eyes she was shocked…it was the husband! Love, truer love than vanity had memorized the details of his gaze. She spoke to him, told him all would be alright, and upon the last word, his form was restored.”

He paused, watching the others quietly, holding the ending like a proffered fish. It wasn’t his best story, he already knew it. The faces were not those he imagined when he told tales in his mind. There was interest, but a vapid sort and swiftly vanishing. Ah well…all must start somewhere. “After, the servant and the husband were united. It was only her attention that broke the illusion and the love of the husband and wife before was called into question. The servant had her love and the man had someone who loved him for more than how he appeared, and how she appeared in his eyes. Illusion is everywhere, right before our eyes. The trick is knowing it, identifying it, owning it. Who among you will be tested? And who among you will see through it?”
He smiled the end of his story not entirely the climactic finish he wanted, but serviceable neverhtheless. As polite applause barely rose over the murmur and lull of the market, Wrenmae bowed. If their words of praise or criticism were drink, the storyteller would be forced to lap up every drop. Their opinion of him was a part of his being now, his experience....his life.

For what it was worth, he hoped it was at least mostly favorable.

[Julian]

Love, the storyteller had said. Quaint enough, Julian supposed. The very concept may as well have been fantasy in itself, as it only seemed to truly exist in myths, and tall tales. He'd give the man his time anyway - it had been a good long while since Julian had heard any new fascinating stories, let alone anything spun by someone who claimed it as his profession. Embellished anecdotes told by drunken men trying to impress each other usually lacked a certain finesse. This man, however, wasn't bad at all. Julian stood watching, and listening, with his cello leaned up against him. This storyteller, clearly a foreigner by the look about him, was pouring himself into it. Not only by the mere sound and inflection in his voice, but with sweeping gestures and heartfelt expressions on his face. Intrigued, Julian remained watching, fascinated by the amount of art that the storyteller put into the effort. The musician recognized that he was spinning his yarn with the same amount of care and dedication Julian put into playing his music. It was a feeling of a distant kinship. As Julian listened, the meat of the story itself began to strike a familiar nerve in him. That was the point of these fictional legends, wasn't it? If it wasn't true, then it was designed to pluck a chord in its listeners, to send home some hopelessly pointed principle about morality or something equally asinine. Fables, that's what they were called. Inevitably, Julian found he related well to the husband in the story - he understood a straying heart. The rest of it, well... the rest of it was fiction. There was no such thing as "true love," though the story itself seemed oddly aware of that. He wondered if Alvadas was truly like that. Only recently had he developed the naive notion of traveling the world. Lhavit was where he'd ended up for now, there was no telling where he'd be in the future. Alvadas, however, seemed treacherous. Even sober, Julian knew that there were certain illusions he was not sure he'd be prepared to weather if any of his darker fears came to haunt him. After the story was over, Julian took a few moments to himself, allowing the story and its message to sink in. "Fascinating tale," the musician said lowly, but raising his voice loud enough for the storyteller to hear. Julian's eyes were still planted on the ground, perhaps in thought, perhaps in an unwillingness to look the storyteller in the eyes. "A storybook happy ending. True love prevails, and all that. Stories like that one though... everyone celebrates the victory of a concept - which itself is just a word, dead and unfeeling. I only wonder what becomes of the wife. I'm not so sure it's a crime to be shallow."

[Wrenmae]

The story was applauded, murmured, commented, and criticized. The audience held attention for just long enough to give their opinions, written on their faces or bodies in sentences of impulse and expression. Without the illusion of story to hold them, there was nothing that kept them together. How easy it was to perceive the threads that attached all people to each other at the moment they all unwound, untangled. Picking up the few scattered coins thrown for the effort, Wrenmae was reminded of other times he had fished for coins on the street, darker circumstances. Alvadas remained, as always, a constant reminder of where he had come and the danger of being somewhere too long. The smell of acrid smoke, almost a tangy sweet cloy at the air around him, the brush of expensive furs against his skin. Vayt, whether he existed beside him or not, kept a firm hand pressed against the boy’s heart. Life, as it always seemed to be, was full of unexpected turns. Some things, however, never changed.

Slipping the last few baubles into his fingers, Wrenmae caught the edge of Julian’s comment, drawing his eyes to the thin fellow. His eyes were elsewhere, rooted among the cracks of Lhavit paving rather than upon the storyteller or the cavalcade of colors around him. It wasn’t what he expected to hear. These days, few people were concerned about the other characters in the story. The world was still fresh from the cataclysm of Valterrian and though no one could remember it, the shape of their world still reeled from its passage. Happy stories with vague moralistic endings seemed to litter the streets and mouths this time of year, and especially on the roads or poor locations. It wasn’t a true story, sure, but it reached across and touched someone with a vague sense of quasi-virtuous hope that the world itself had not turned its back on the good-hearted.

Vayt would have laughed, or howled at the displays of weakness.

Life was something to find difficult, to struggle against vainly in the hope of meaning. It was a dark thought, the sort of notion Wrenmae had distanced himself from emotionally. Meaning was every bit what one made it to be, what one needed it to be. This fellow, this stargazer of people, he had a mind to ask questions about a world that did not exist. The woman of the story was not real, though likely her story was more real than any other he had told.

Wrenmae sighed, letting his buoyant joy escape from his mouth and vanish around him. Julian, the thin man so quietly questioning by the night of Lhavit struck a chord in Wrenmae. In this man was a little bit of the storyteller’s own inquisitive nature. Was it right to think such of someone older than him? Perhaps, but regardless, Wrenmae subconsciously sought answers to his darker queries of self, of purpose.

“No crime, no,” He said at last, kneeling down to look up at Julian from the ground, “But not the kind of nature most people want to see rewarded. You want to know what happened to the woman? I can tell that story…but maybe I can treat you to a drink first, it isn’t the kind of tale I’d want to tell out here.”

[Julian]

What the storyteller said made Julian narrow his eyes thoughtfully. What people want to see rewarded…? Therein lied the difference between telling stories and music, he supposed. Music was about the truth of inner expression through rhythms and crescendos. Stories held truths of their own, carefully constructed with an artfully crafted network of entertaining lies. In both cases, however, people generally preferred one thing over another. Happy endings, as opposed to a personal confrontation about one's own flaws. Or quick, merry jaunts, instead of a slow haunting sonata. Wrenmae's offer made Julian smile suddenly - the diluted, watered down sort of smile that belies mild surprise and not much else. "Actually, that sounds quite nice. I play music for the Shooting Star. It's just down the street if you'd like to go there. They have a relatively colorful selection of wines and spirits." Julian gestured in its direction with a quick sweep of his arm. "I'm surprised you even have a story for the woman. The entire tale was absolutely fictional, wasn't it? I suppose I really just have an odd fascination with the unsung antagonist's motives. Or convenient plot devices, as it were." Shifting his cello in his arm, he hoisted the instrument up to begin the task of carrying it with him back to the Inn. And after he'd carted it all this way, too. "I'm Julian, by the way. You're not from Lhavit, are you? Just recently arrived?"

[Wrenmae]

"Shooting Star?" Echoing the name, Wrenmae grinned, "As chance would have it, I've picked up a small job tale weaving for the place, small world eh?" Piercing the distance between them, the general unease of two strangers, Wrenmae strove for an easier introduction. Turning, the storyteller quickly took the reigns of his horse, returning the cape and wide brimmed hat to their respective places among the saddlebags, patting the kitten lightly despite its hiss to be left alone. Both animals were sick again, mucus running from the horse's nostrils and Ket with bloodshot eyes.

He tried to ignore these signs, happy at least to have met someone interested in him in the city of Lhavit. By now any hint he had once commanded the attention of a crowd had vanishes, they were but two in a large crowd, scarcely more than that.

Taking stride beside Julian, Wrenmae led his horse toward the inn, breathing the scent of a busy marketplace and the tailed ends of stories hanging off those that passed by.

"Even fiction deserves to be told in entirety," the storyteller answered at last, thoughtfully, "I may have made the story, but if something similar happened it would be a great disservice to not examine the life of the woman as well eh? Not many people ask me to elaborate, you're the first actually, so if you'll hear it, I'll tell you what became of the woman the audience did not wish to follow with their minds eye."

Julian, the name was smooth, like oil atop water and Wrenmae nodded to it, extending his own hand.

"Wrenmae, and yes, I arrived not too long ago...from Alvadas. Where do you hail from?"

[Julian]

A handshake! Now that felt strangely foreign. They weren't a custom greeting here in Lhavit - he was sure he hadn't given anyone a handshake since at least Summer the year before, if not even further back than that. Maintaining his polite smile, Julian paused their walk to take the storyteller's hand firmly and give it a very slight shake, before continuing on down the road. "Nowhere near as glamorous. Just Syliras," Julian responded dully. "I arrived here earlier this Spring, but the city has grown on me quickly." That may have been due to his latent, unexplored Lhavitian heritage. It had been his paternal grandmother who was native to this city, but she had died long before Julian was ever even born. Being part Lhavitian was about as interesting to Julian as being three-quarters Syliran. "You're a better storyteller than most, if you really put that much thought into it, Wrenmae." He had to resist the very cordial urge to insert a "mister" before the name, but he guessed given the storyteller's immediate disposition that he would reject that sort of formality. The name itself sounded foreign. Almost a little feminine. "My father used to have the same knack for weaving engaging tales. Of course, he always claimed his stories were absolutely true, featuring himself as the ever-intrepid master swordsman. It was only years into my adulthood did I begin to consider he may have embellished just a little."

[Wrenmae]

The Shooting Star Inn was suffused with traffic at this time of evening. Those looking for a place to rest their feet and marvel found the doors open and inviting, others sitting in the flickering halls watched the current entertainment with a ride range of expressions from the interested to the apathetic. No two beings were alike, each different in remarkably fundamental ways. A Jamoura, strange hairy creature, sat deep in thought while a Vantha turned to the door with flashing eyes.

Wrenmae grabbed a table for the two men near the back, signaling the waitress to bring a bottle of wine. While he wasn't particularly well off in terms of personal wealth, what little he did have was used to benefit his meetings with others.

The thought caught him oddly, half turned to Julian in offering a seat. It was a moment of serendipity, a sudden clairvoyance that broke through the smoke of his current thoughts and blazed like some torch in a cave. His father, a larger man of brilliant red beard and thunderous laughs, it was him who said first that money was a fickle monster paralyzed by wander lust. It was never ill at ease being horded, and most found getting rid of money could make them more friends than keeping it.

Money was a tribe of nomads, disrupting commerce if still and supplementing it when passing through.

Blinking, momentarily disoriented by the intensity of the memory, Wrenmae struggled to regain his social footing. Smiling apologetically he pulled out a seat for Julian and sunk back into his own. Remembering his father was always something of a trial. The last he'd seen of the man was just before Vayt, in the mountains of the Unforgiving. He'd left then, leaving behind his children as he searched for help.

Likely he died there, alone in the dark and snow.

It was not a fate he deserved.

"Syliras," Wrenmae repeated thoughtfully, "You've journeyed a long way to be here, not to pry...but why?"

He was interrupted briefly, a girl with bright eyes and a shy smile putting two glasses and a bottle of wine onto the table. Wrenmae smiled at her, catching her eyes in his own. He did not press, did not act on the impulse to invade her sphere of personality with his own Djed. Hypnotism was an easy crutch, and a difficult one to deny. It was painfully easy, even to the most basic practitioner, as pushing ones influence on another was almost second nature. Maintaining it however, influencing to larger degrees, that took patience and steady manipulation.

She blushed, a spread of color blooming on her cheeks before she turned in a wave of black hair. He watched her go for a moment, swiveling back to Julian with another apologetic smile. It wasn't that he was uninterested in the conversation, it was simply good practice to immediately discourage thoughts of his family with whimsical distractions.

"Your father sounds like a good taleweaver," Wrenmae said with a nod, "Many storytellers rarely let on that their fiction is truly a lie, it somehow dirties the illusion...but I find that true stories are rarely all that bright and cheery, nor do they serve to particularly renew hope in this broken world."

Uncorking the wine and pouring them both a cup, he slid one to Julian.

"The woman you want to know about, she had a name." Looking into his own cup, at the dark crimson rippling there like a tiny inland sea, Wrenmae swirled it. "Her name was Alyna, Alyna Fearce of a highborn blood...or rather her parents like to say they were."

Twisting his mouth in concentration, the storyteller almost felt bad for the woman he had created. She was without a clue why the world of his story had turned against her, and in a fragile way, her fate was directly linked to his own callous lack of care.

"What do you want to know of her?"

[Aural]

Player: Wrenmae XP: Storytelling +4, Hypnotism +1 Lores: A True Showman, The Art of Tale Weaving, Illusion of Story Brings People Together Other: You scrounged up 6 kina in tips and a headache from the wine. Additional Notes: More good stuff!