Vlasta - Cold Mountain Water

[Obsidian Sea]

It may not be the haunt of many, but there are those who could this tempestuous night find themselves seeking shelter and warmth at the nameless tavern of Outentown. Rain lashed heavily on windowpanes and the wind whistled around the corners of the houses; a startling rebellion against the tepid mercy of the day - mercy only relative to this year's seasonal plight. Outentown's tavern is occupied that night by a great many, staggered in their progress to or from Sarshel by the conditions of the climate and the road; and perhaps you are one of them.

Bedrolls are supplied as best they can by the residents of the village, for the tavern was to become a shelter for fifteen unfortunate travelers that night, indistinct in race or class by the bondage of their circumstances. The residents of the village have no beds to give them, so this is how it must be. It is a night of socialising, though the mood of many is as damp as the weather.

Amidst the gathered, your voices are the most pronounced - and there is one other, besides, that is to be heard for what it is. A woman, who makes no sound with her feet upon the floorboards as she moves, steps forward to the fireplace. Her frock is drab brown, cut to the middle of her shin; her feet are bare no doubt from shedding her footwear as she made it down the mud path and into the tavern, and as a consequence she is smattered with mud around and above her ankles. Her hair hangs down, an unexciting brunette, and in places it is knotted. She is in need of a brush, but presently she does not care. She climbs up upon the table before the fireplace, sitting upright upon the lower half of her legs and looking out as though she were in a trance, taking no heed of the gathered.

Lake Vlasta,
Cold mountain water,
Tall rising grasses there,
Mist and fog curtains swim there.

And in the fog you might see,
A woman,
Out there.
Up she comes,
Up she rises,
As if out of nowhere.

Her husband is waiting,
The children play at home,
There is food upon their table.
Her work is done.

And still she rises.
Her dress is stained now,
Her voice is strained.

Andrik...
Andrik...

She roams the foggy paths.
And then they rise up off the lake.
And then she walks.
She hopes she can come home.

Long walks take her.
Her legs are weak now.

The table is laid.
Are the beds made?
The dawn is out there.

She speeds back where she must go.
She knows her place.
And like a cloud,
She is drowned.

The elegy ends. People go to sleep. Some attempt to speak with the woman, but she is tired now from the performance, and will speak to none of them. An otherworldly atmosphere sets over the tavern, punctured only by the sound of the rain tapping the ground in rapid rhythm from the guttering above. People sleep. And in a moment of the night when Talos has found His satisfaction, the rain ends. And now, for a moment, there is truly silence. But it is an external silence; a silence that speaks more than words, draping itself over the sleeping bodies and covering the tavern in the sentiment of the song which the woman had shared.

[Obsidian Sea]

Sorrowful news about the disappearance of Andrik Vacec's wife some few months prior to the present day is compounded by terrible news that overcame Vlasta yestermorning. The younger of the Vacec children - a daughter of only 6 winters - was discovered at the sunrise, her drowned body lying by the side of Vlasta Lake on the south side of the lake. The Watchscout to come across the body fears the girl to be the latest victim of Goblin malice, which has roused the village to fear that creatures have found a way to get in and out of the village walls without detection.

Andrik Vacec means to leave his family home of 5 generations, taking his son with him towards Stowenford when a caravan will next go that way. Fraught by the news of his daughter's death, Andrik had to be coerced by close family friends to let his daughter's funeral be held in the village, and to wait upon the next caravan before he departed. It had been his initial plan to take the road as far as Sarshel and be out of the village as soon as possible, but his irrationality has been checked for now.