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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shayuri" data-source="post: 2882607" data-attributes="member: 4936">The white-haired, pale-skinned woman-child who knew herself only as Shard entered the tent, her pert little nose wrinkling in distaste at the smell and squalor, even as her white-irised eyes widened and a voice far older than her own warned in the back of her skull, This is how it is for a reason; there is method AND madness here.Delicate hands clenched on the edges of her cloak, Shard started to walk deeper in, when a cancerous voice croaked, "Everyone comes to see old Etna. Everyone has something to ask, something they want to know. But all those questions, and Etna has no answers. It makes Etna sad. So sad."She breaks off, rocking slightly back and forth, mumbling, seemingly off in her own world.An uncomfortable silence passes, and Shard considers leaving when the hag speaks again:"Questions, questions. Everyone has questions. Even Etna has questions. You there, maybe you have answers, yes? And, maybe if you have answers, then Etna has answers too, for you, yes?""What do you see when you sleep, child? What troubles your dreams?"Shard hesitated, for this was personal knowledge, this was -powerful- knowledge...she sensed it without knowing how or why. Finally she spoke simple and true, "I see an eye of crystal and an eye of obsidian, whirling 'round a great orb in the void, always on opposite sides so that one can never see the other. The black eye touches the world, and flames and screams rise in its wake. The white eye dares not, but it sheds tears that it tries to put the flames out with. Yet the tears catch fire as they fall, they blacken, and become brittle...and in the end I cannot see if they will put out the fire, die in it, or start more of their own."She shivers. "It makes me sad.""Who pulls your strings? Who's the puppetmaster makin' ye dance all pretty? Or," she cackles, "do you think yourself a freeman?"Shard shakes her head and replies unhappily, "I know that I am broken. I am all that's left of what was something else...something greater, and something that was made. Whoever made what I was may still have a string to me. Whoever broke me, also has a string." She pauses, and adds, "In coming here, in listening to you, I've given you a string too. And the others that fell with me...they have strings, and I feel them always tugging at me." Shard lifts her chin then, "But I have a string too! I may not be free, but I do have something to say about what I do and why.""And, you didn't forget a gift for poor old Etna, did you? Yes, I can see it, it's in that backpack, yes... what did you bring poor old Etna? Show me."Shard reaches into the backpack, turning from defiant to bashful in an eyeblink."A berry pie, taken from the kitchens of a lord's castle in the highlands, where the berries are fresh and ripe, and the cooks have had the way of baking since olden times. Still hot too." She produces the pie, and a wooden fork, and sets it before the witch."A rare sunstone from the caves under the desert. Keep it outside during the day, and it will draw the sun's light and warmth into itself. When night falls, it will shine like a torch, and give off heat to keep the winter's chill away...yet never enough to burn or smoke." Shard sets the yellow spherical gem beside the pie.The last item is...a bit strange given the first two. It seems to be a wooden box made of thin planks and filled with soft, pungent soil. And nothing else."And this is the richest soil from the lowlands and the great forsests," she explains. "When you eat the pie, spit the seeds into this box. Keep it outside in the day, and under the sunstone at night. It will grow berries bigger and tastier than you've ever seen...and it will keep doing so as long as you spit their seeds back into the soil, and keep it sunned."She clears her throat. "Now...I do have some questions.""How can I, and the other who fell, be made whole again?""Who will help us?""What is our most dangerous foe?"</blockquote>

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