Private Tindercreek and Tillvale

[Walter Thornley]

​

The afternoon shivered in collective dreary. Drizzle fell from the sky. A thick fog crept into the folds of the clothes, weighed them down with a chill. Today of all days in particular, the smell of old fires was wafting over from the end street east of the gate.

Almost a month has passed since the first meeting of those who sought to bring peace back to the undeath and chaos cauldron. By now, everyone had fallen into routines. Expeditions, patrols, rotations, civil duty. There weren't too many deviations within Arpa, thanks to the wards - especially after the plague fiend. Supplies kept trickling in, the lifeblood returning to the faces and facades within the walls. Word was, the Masons' Guild would arrive before the year's end.

She arrived from the mists - barefoot, grey in the face from exhaustion, wispy hair clumped in dirty locks from sweat and tangles, rags the color of dirt, a plea of help on cracked lips. Barely twelve, no name that they could get out of her. The girl was guided to a little campsite at the gate, rather than be invited in. A hard-hearted move for anyone... that has not seen as much as the Huntsmen have. Too many questions for the goings on.
They'd sent for a healer, for some food, and also booted a runner to Percival to report the alleged situation.
Hopefully, a paragon would arrive soon to take charge of investigation.

Genevieve, who was with the warden folks this time of day, seemed slightly unsettled by the time steps approached with purpose. She leaned to the gateway, hand on the hip besides the lantern idly shimmering with blue wisps, as if half-way considering lighting it and announcing the Hunt. A new appearance made her swing away from her post and straighten up, heels clicking with a wet splash in the mud.

"Genevieve of the Hunt, at your service," would have to suffice as a greeting. "We have a child at the gate," her hand moved in front of her chest in a number of silent symbols, hope in the dark grey eyes for recognition. When that did not come, she whispered, "she'd have walked out there alone, but the places she speaks of are on the map, about a day and a half or two by horseback. We aren't sure that we should let her in, though. Come see for yourself?"

The girl sat by the firepit, watching them from a distance with shadowed, sleepless dark eyes. Hard to tell under the layers of grime and dirt, but she didn't seem like a shambling corpse at least. A bowl of simple gruel and some bread laid beside her, untouched.

 

[Momoshiro]

The month that followed had passed more quietly than Momoshiro might have expected.

Arpa had settled into its new rhythm, and he had settled into it with the town. There were patrols to join, stretches of countryside to search, spirits to deal with when they wandered too close to the wards, and the less glamorous work that seemed to accompany any place trying to rebuild itself. Momo had never been particularly good at sitting idle, so he found himself volunteering for whatever needed doing. Sometimes that meant following the Huntsmen beyond the walls. Sometimes it meant helping put restless spirits to rest. Other times it was nothing more complicated than lending a pair of hands where they were needed and quietly disappearing again when the work was done.

He had also grown accustomed to the people of Arpa.

Faces that had once been strangers had become familiar. He knew which streets were busiest in the morning, which portions of the walls required the most attention, and which taverns remained loud well into the evening. He had learned the rhythms of the place in much the same way he learned the rhythms of a spirit—by watching, listening, and allowing familiarity to build slowly. It wasn't home, and would never be, but it had begun to feel less like somewhere he was merely passing through.

Perhaps that was why the sight of the girl at the gate unsettled him so quickly.

The drizzle had already soaked through his yellow haori by the time Momo approached, the damp fabric clinging somewhat more heavily to his shoulders as he made his way through the mist. His ears were lowered against the cold, and his white hair had begun to gather tiny droplets along its length. He had been returning from one of the outer patrols when the commotion near the gate caught his attention. Nothing particularly loud—no shouting, no alarm—but enough movement to suggest that something unusual had happened.

His ruby eyes found Genevieve first.

Then the girl.

Momo slowed.

For several seconds, he simply watched her.

Bare feet. Filthy clothing. Skin grey with exhaustion. Hair tangled into dirty clumps. She looked impossibly small beside the adults gathered around her, and the untouched bowl of food sitting at her side somehow made the image worse rather than better. Hunger should have driven her toward it. Anyone who had walked for days should have been ravenous.

Instead, she simply stared.

Momo's expression changed almost imperceptibly.

His attention moved over her again, this time with the practiced scrutiny of an exorcist. Not looking for wounds alone. Not looking for the signs of illness. He watched the air around her, the space immediately beside her, the subtle disturbances that might betray a spirit clinging to her shadow or something darker lingering beneath the surface.

Nothing obvious.

That, perhaps, was more concerning than finding something.

He glanced toward Genevieve as he approached, offering her a small nod of greeting before his attention returned to the child.

“You said she walked here alone?”

His voice was quiet, careful not to carry too far toward the girl. His eyes remained on her as he spoke, studying the exhaustion in her posture and the way she watched them all with those dark, sleepless eyes.

“At least a day and a half from the nearest place on the map?”

There was no disbelief in the questions. Only the dawning realization of what that actually meant.

A child of barely twelve had crossed that distance barefoot, through whatever lay beyond Arpa's walls, and somehow arrived alive.

Momo's gaze drifted briefly toward the mist behind her.

The fog seemed thicker beyond the gate.

He didn't like that.

Not because there was necessarily something hiding within it. He had learned long ago that fear was a poor substitute for evidence. But the circumstances were wrong in too many small ways to dismiss. The distance. The condition of the girl. The fact that she had no name anyone could get from her. The untouched food.

And, most importantly, the fact that she had come from somewhere that had apparently ceased to be safe enough for her to remain there.

Momo took another slow step forward, then stopped well short of crowding her.

He crouched instead, lowering himself until he was closer to her height. His hands remained visible and relaxed, making no attempt to reach for her.

“Hello.”

The word was gentle.

“I’m Momoshiro, but you can call me Momo if you'd like.”

He didn't ask her name. Not yet.

She had already been questioned, and whatever had happened to her, Momo suspected that she had probably spent enough time being asked things she didn't know how to answer.

His eyes flicked toward the bowl beside her, then back to her face.

“You don't have to eat it if you don't want to.”

A faint smile touched his lips.

“But it is there whenever you're ready.”

He let the silence settle afterward rather than immediately filling it with another question. Momo had spent enough time around frightened spirits to know that sometimes the first thing you gave someone wasn't an answer.

It was time.

His ears twitched at some distant sound beyond the walls, and his eyes briefly lifted toward the fog before returning to the girl.

Then, quieter still, he added,

“You walked a very long way to get here.”

A pause.

“You must have been looking for somewhere safe.”

 

[Walter Thornley]

"Said what I said, foxman. Day and a half by horse," Genevieve whispered back, quickly stringing words together while her eyes flicked to the campfire at least twice. It didn't seem like the woman was lost, more like she was aware of a number of things the situation might turn out to be, and not enthused.
"When the lord was leaving a week ago, he said the wards should be calibrated to vaporize anything undead until he returns, so... Kid's not aggressive, but you never know, sometimes you just need to invite them in. We tried to make do outside. Kid's not talking to us anymore, though."

"Hello."​

Eyes like an animal cornered, whole figure frozen, tense, ready to flee. The girl did not move, only stared back, stealing quick glances to study Momoshiro whenever he moved.
Hands hugging knees locked together, fingers hooking messily into each other.

Nothing at first glance. She was not translucent. There was no shadow falling wrong. Feet left marks in the dirt.

Something, the longer he looked. The girl was uninjured, despite being dirty - one would think traipsing the marshes without shoes to be perilous for many reasons besides the undead, even if all the snakes were gone.

There was also this buzz when he looked at her. A slight feeling of oddness carefully folded and hidden into one small, exhausted shape - and attached to something clasped very tightly in one of the hands- wait, no, her hands moved just a little while earlier, and they were empty.

An aura almost like a weaver. But reedy, cricket-song-strung, damp, somehow.

No sense of threat, though. Not yet, perhaps, or maybe not at all.

“You walked a very long way to get here.”​

She curled into a tighter ball, no longer looking at him. Stared at the food instead. Swallowed hard staring at the gruel. Not like it made her hungry - like it made her sick.

“You must have been looking for somewhere safe.”​

A nod.

"We've seen the light across the marshes. They wouldn't let us leave, though."

 

[Momoshiro]

Momo's ears tilted at Genevieve's explanation, though his attention remained fixed on the girl. Vaporizing anything undead until the lord returned. That explained the caution, at least. It did little to explain the child.

Then the girl spoke.

Momo went very still.

They wouldn't let us leave.

The words were simple, but they carried more weight than he liked. His gaze flicked briefly toward the fog beyond the gate, then back to her. Somewhere beneath the rain and the crackle of the fire, that strange sensation remained—a faint, reedy vibration at the edge of his awareness. It reminded him of the Shroud when something was present just beneath the surface, except this felt... different. Not hostile. Not exactly.

But hidden.

His eyes lowered toward the girl's hands.

For just a moment, he'd seen something there. Or thought he had. Something clasped tightly enough to suggest it mattered, followed by an empty-handedness that made him question whether he'd actually seen anything at all.

Momo didn't press.

Instead, he shifted slightly, angling himself so that he wasn't directly between the girl and the open gate. If she needed to run, he didn't want his presence to become another obstacle. His posture remained relaxed, but his attention had sharpened considerably.

“Who wouldn't let you leave?”

The question was gentle, almost conversational.

He paused before adding, “The people you were with?”

His gaze briefly moved toward the fog again.

“Or something else?”

There was no accusation in the question. He wasn't even certain there was something else. But the strange sensation surrounding her, the journey, the untouched food, and now this...

Too many pieces refused to fit together.

Momo's eyes returned to the girl.

“And the light you saw...”

His ears twitched.

“Was it here? Arpa?”

A beat passed.

“Or somewhere else?”

He kept his voice quiet, giving her plenty of room to answer—or not answer. Whatever she was carrying, whether it was an object, a secret, or something far stranger, Momo had no intention of forcing it out of her.

Not yet.

 

[Walter Thornley]

Cracked nails, dirt stuck underneath. So reedy thin it made the heart shrink. Her eyes were large and grey with specks of yellow that made them look bogwater-green. She lowered her eyes to the ground, digging at it with the toes peeking from under the rags her pretty aproned cotton dress had become.

No answer.

Genevieve pretended the guard post was the only thing of interest, but then, she was not out of earshot, and the rumours said that the Hunt all had noses like wolves and ears like bats. The thought tickled, vaguely, at the nape of the neck, like unwanted fingers.
Not all wrong, even though it wasn't true. Her hand wrapped around the stock of the crossbow, index finger idling behind the triger ring, tracing the briar flowers engraved there.
Didn't help her see unseen, that, but at least she would be lightning fast if something happened.

The girl, meanwhile, looked past the large, reassuring presence of the shaman. Towards the gate.

Her lips pressed together, a short quiver passed through them. Upset, scared... hungry in a way no food would quench.
Momo's senses weren't lying. There was nothing around her because there was something that she was, besides a human girl, exhausted and starving. The warmth of her life flowing into the Shroud around them did not feel entirely human, the strength to endure that long trek, the lack of cuts, all indicated a presence. It was not darkened, though.

"We saw sunlight. It's been long since clouds burst so often. Buried all the crops last season." She pondered. "But here is nicer."
Sharpened features of her round face shifted into fear.

"We can't go, though. People who came to the village, they won't let us. So we don't call for crownsfolk. Can you help?"

Her hand tucked something that looked like a clump of thread rubbed together into a spiral underneath the sleeve.

 

[Momoshiro]

Momo's expression softened at the girl's request, though the answer left him with considerably more questions than it had answered. People had come to the village. They wouldn't let anyone leave. They didn't want the crownsfolk called.

And now she was asking him for help.

His gaze lingered on her for a moment, taking in the trembling lips, the dirt beneath her nails, the way she kept looking toward the gate as though some part of her expected someone to come through it. Hunger clung to her almost as strongly as exhaustion did. Yet beneath all of that, there was something else. Something in the way her presence touched the Shroud that still didn't feel entirely human.

Not corrupted.

Not hostile.

Just... wrong enough that Momo couldn't dismiss it.

His eyes dipped briefly as her hand disappeared beneath her sleeve. He caught the movement, but didn't react. Whatever she'd tucked away, she clearly didn't want anyone seeing it. For now, he could respect that.

“Help you do what?” he asked gently.

Momo lowered himself slightly, bringing himself closer to her level without crowding her. His voice remained quiet and even, giving her no reason to think she was in trouble.

“Do you want us to go back with you?”

The question came carefully. Not because he intended to agree without knowing more, but because he wanted to understand exactly what she was asking of them.

His gaze shifted briefly toward the gate again.

“If these people are keeping everyone there, then I'd like to know why.” His ears flicked back toward the girl. “And if they're preventing anyone from calling for help, that's something we should probably take seriously.”

He paused, considering her words.

“You said we can't go.”

The distinction caught at him.

“Who is we?”

There was no accusation in the question. Only quiet curiosity, though Momo's attention sharpened as he waited for her answer.

Somewhere beneath his calm, the uneasy sensation he'd first noticed when she arrived stirred again.

The hidden thread.

The strange presence.

The village.

The people who wouldn't let them leave.

Too many pieces were beginning to gather around the same empty space, and Momo still couldn't see what belonged in the middle.

He didn't like that.

But he wasn't going to frighten a starving child by pretending he understood something he didn't.

“It's alright,” he said softly. “I won't let anything harm you.”

 

[Walter Thornley]

"We's we. Me and my-family. People in old armors came, they took what the Tindercreek have. Lasted them half a year, over the winter. Then they came to us. Said they were in the war." She mumbled, and cast a cautious glance at the Huntsman with the crossbow. "The gate lady's watching. She has hunter eyes, not bogfolk eyes like you."

She fiddled with the woven strands of something hidden up her sleeve.
"You're crownsfolk. Maybe you can get them to leave before we all die. Maybe you can take us in? We know here better than any of you."
She squinted at the bright shirt.
"Can you get the gate lady to leave?" Her face scrunched in deep thought. "I'll tell you a secret. Don't want her to hear. Not for the likes of people in armors."
She tapped the ground on the other side of her twice with the palm, really stomping it. Fingers curled, came up with a small dormouse. Hunger flared again, appetite burning through the glinting eyes.

 

[Momoshiro]

For a little while, Momo simply looked at the girl, his warm smile remaining exactly where it had been. There was nothing threatening in his expression, nothing that demanded an answer. Just a quiet patience that he hoped might give her something to hold on to.

Eventually, his gaze shifted toward Genevieve. He gave the Huntsman a lazy little shrug, accompanied by an expression that seemed to say, Well... it is what it is.

Then he looked back to the girl.

His expression became thoughtful as he considered everything she'd told him—the people in armor, the village, the winter, the way they had taken what the Tindercreek had before coming for her family. There were a great many things he wanted to ask, but none of them seemed particularly useful while she was standing here frightened, hungry, and surrounded by people she clearly didn't trust.

Momo sighed softly. His ears perked, and his smile widened as he reached out and gave the girl's head a gentle pat.

“I'm just folk-folk,” he said, nodding toward Genevieve, “and she's got a job to do. We can't exactly ask her to abandon her responsibilities, now can we?”

Behind him, his tail swayed lazily, flicking from side to side. One ear twitched, and he reached up to give it a quick scratch before continuing.

“But how about this?”

He reached into the long sleeve of his robe and produced a small muffin—the remains of what had been intended as his own breakfast. He held it out to her.

“Why don't you have something to eat first?”

Once she'd had a chance to take it, Momo gestured away from the gate.

“And then we'll go somewhere a little quieter and talk. Somewhere you don't have to worry about everyone listening in.”

His red eyes disappeared behind gently closed lids as his smile softened.

Then he rose to his full height and stepped past her, walking back the way she had come. He didn't look over his shoulder immediately. Instead, he gave her the choice to follow.

After a few steps, however, he glanced back.

“Come on now, little one.”

His tone remained gentle, but there was a quiet warmth beneath it.

“You've got a story to tell me.”

 

[Walter Thornley]

Genevieve scowled, but moved her finger away from the grooves at the trigger. She shrugged too. Work was work. Besides, the kid was suspicious. Only last week, there had been a wraith that burst into mist as soon as she passed the gate under the guise of a woman from the Shieldbearers. That woman proper had been later located in the drinking hall, off duty after a long and grueling hog through the bogs. Good they had their own unorthodox cavalry.

She moved her head down, nose scrunching slightly, with a noise of protest hummed - but did not move away. After all, her eyes were affixed to the seeming intent to help from the huge man. But what he was saying peaked her attention no more than bread or stew. Fingers gripped onto the dormouse tighter - it did not squeak, it should have bitten, but it seemed to have chosen to play dead.

And yet, she scrambled back up onto dirty feet and followed, steadying on her feet. A stare was cast over her shoulder, a few seconds' delay, at Genevieve - but the Huntress did not move, and the girl caught up with the long-legged fox, until they made a half-way turn behind some brush. The muffin he offered was left on the ground besides the other food offerings.
"I didn't say a story."

She frowned.
"I said I'd tell a secret, but, now, look."

Her mouth opened, then opened wider still, eyes bulging slightly. Her neck moved, not in a swallowing motion, but something inside, with a small choked sound and half an exhale.
A small black bird's head looked from behind the rows of perfect, white, whole teeth, its feathers shiny and eyes clever. A moment passed, the bird turned its head inward, feathers flared, and a tiny face looked back at Momo.

There it was. The wrong.
The voice flowed smoothly without the façade moving a single muscle.
"We don't want to talk. We need help. She needs help. We can't stay long if you can't take us in. We must go back. To the others."