You’ve just arrived in a swampy, dim town. As you look around, your gaze is met with shacks and cabins. It smells of rotted wood and wet moss. You 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.” ((How do you respond?)) "Oh, I just, uh…" River stutters, tensing up. He eyes the crone, then back outside the tent. For a moment, the air thickens with anticipation, until his shoulders relax with a practiced, imperceptible breath, and he politely lowers himself upon the cushion to cross his legs. Dark eyes measure the old woman's appearance against his memory. All recognition remains shrouded. Stirred by a chill in the air, he slips his hands into the open sleeves of his robes. Only there, hidden, can he allow his thumb and fingers to anxiously pinch and stir along the inner seams.
"I have many stories," he says, his voice soft with deference, "though I was not expecting the one being written to lead me here. Can I ask how it is that you recognise me?"
Once it is clear that he shan't escape with ambiguities or deflections, he offers a simple shrug. "None of my stories are very important. My father was a stable groom, and I learned how to take care of animals from him, as well as how to track and hunt them, as we accompanied the estate master on his hunting trips. Though as I became an adult, I had what you might call a spiritual awakening, and realised it is my purpose to seek and serve a higher power than Man. A power separate in truth from the Creator... so I set out on my own to find it, and thus far it has led me here."
