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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zurai" data-source="post: 3904789" data-attributes="member: 52324">After Lempetie watches each of you eat at least one oat-cake - barring Alistia, who she frowns at, but says nothing to - she settles back into her chair and draws a whispy breath."So, a story of beginnings, you want, yes?" Her beady brown eyes sweep over the group. "A story of history, then, to bide away the time." Her eyes unfocus then, seeming to stare through the walls of the council building. "I was young, then, even younger than the youngest of you lot. Times were hard. There were spirit-talkers still - I am one, after all - but the people roamed the hills in families instead of living in one place year-round. There were no farmers, only plant-takers who gathered what plants they could find as they travelled. Food was scarce and we had to hoard what we had for the winter, when no plants grew to be gathered and few animals wandered around to be hunted."Her voice takes on a lilting, sing-song quality as she describes to you over the course of the next half hour the troubles and trials her family faced in the time before Cuirlen. She tells of feast and famine, sickness and fear; she paints livid pictures of the hills her family wandered over the seasons; she spins tales of devastating storms, deadly grass fires, and terrible droughts. All throughout, her gaze remains distant, unfocused, unseeing.Eventually, her tale winds down to a pause, and she seems to once again remember where, and when, she is. "... but none of that is what you wanted to hear. You want the tale of the founding of Cuirlen. Not as exciting a tale, I fear. In truth, 'twas all the spirits' doing. One summer, each and every spirit talker received a vision of a hilltop overlooking the river and the forest. We all felt it was important to gather our families here. By the end of summer, more people than I had ever seen were gathered on Cuirlen Hill, in tents and rude huts. When the final family arrived, the spirits told us that we should stay here - build permanent homes for the first time ever. They showed some of us how to plant the seeds of the plants we gathered, and they and their families became the farmers. Others were shown how to hunt in the Noonshadow forest, where few had dared to travel before. On and on the spirits revealed secrets until things were much as they are today - farmers and herders, hunters and gatherers, smiths and weavers, bakers and tanners."As her story finishes, she sinks back into her chair and her eyes half-close. She looks tired; she probably hasn't told a story this long in years.</blockquote>

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