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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallak" data-source="post: 3642215" data-attributes="member: 37105">Naomi grits her teeth, not seeming to hear Malachi.  Her fists are clenched at her sides as she stares hard at the bard who is choking and apparently unable to do anything about it.Magyar slips over to the kitchen, snagging Eloise as she heads out, mugs of brew clutched in her fists.Eloise's eyes go wide.  "What do we do?" she asks, clearly frightened by Magyar's words.Grondar places a big hand on the bard's narrow arm, and time seems to stretch out for the former potter turned sailor.  The world around him slows, grinding to a halt.  Grondar blinks.[sblock=Grondar's Vision]Her name is Awen, and the sun shines upon her.  The soft black earth beneath her bare feet is slightly damp after the early spring rain, and the breeze blowing in her face brings the promise of more to come.  She spreads her arms wide, laughing in the open field.  Suddenly, the world tilts crazily, and everthing shifts.  The ship's deck rolls beneath her thick boots as she hangs off a sheet, out over the port bow.  She gazes ahead at the approaching continent.  Everything rocks again.  An elf stands before her in the small office.  He has a stack of papers in his hand, and he is saying something.  He sounds strange.  Of course, he's speaking elvish.  But Awen understands elvish.  After all, she is an elf."...sending you there tomorrow morning.  You are the best suited to this mission, Awen.  You of all people know as well as I, the humans have forfeited their right to life.  You were at the Gatts Proposal.  You saw the Guerrin Crater.  These people are filled with a thirst for destruction.  They are beyond bargaining or reason.  The time has come to use their passion as a weapon against them.  Use your talents to turn them on themselves and rid the Mother of their infestation."  His words and the scene both fade, replaced by images and perceptions that flash by too quickly to comprehend.  Awen grows up and leaves home.  She is young and playing with her first harp.  She is captured and tortured with knives.  The experiences flood together, faster and faster, until everything freezes on the image of a black smoking pit.  Vision shatters.[/sblock]Grondar blinks, and the world slowly returns to focus, fading in around the edges.  Suddenly, everything snaps into place, sound and motion returning all at once in a jumble.  He stumbles back, head ringing like a ship's bell.  In front of him, the bard's head is flung back, mouth open in a scream that is long in coming.  Silent tears slide down Naomi's cheeks.  A black mat of hair, a wig, falls from the bard's shuddering head, freeing long golden tresses that cascade down the musician's back and revealing slender, pointed ears.  A piercing, grating scream rips from the minstrel's open mouth.  It is high and tearing.  It is the sound of a woman in mortal anguish.  Tears stream down the bard's face over cheekbones revealed to be wholly feminine, out of blue eyes filled with pain and hurt.  It cuts through the ears, stabbing the brain.  All across the room, mugs shatter, spilling beer over tables and onto the common room floor.  Eloise swoons against Magyar, dropping the mugs she was carrying and falling into his arms.  Naomi gasps, her eyes going suddenly wide as she collapses backwards into Malachi, turning and weeping into his stomach.  The elf falls back off the bench onto the floor, unconcious, her body looking small and fragile in repose.The common room has gone completely still.  Here and there, several people have collapsed, apparently unconcious.  Everyone else is staring at the party in the corner.  No one moves.  No one says anything.  The silence is punctuated by Naomi's muffled weeping, deep sobs that wrack the child's small body.</blockquote>

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