| Lostsinger Plains |
| . You finally reach the foot of the mountain around sunset. It's still chilly, but compared to the mountain top, you're happy with the warmth. You hum a little tune to yourself, and realize that you're actually quite content. After all, you went up the mountain, survived an avalance, and...ah, made the aquantence of some interesting creatures and people. This is a story no one will believe when you get home. Suddenly you feel a strange tingling sensation; when it passes, you find you're not on the mountain, but instead on the edge of a wide grassland, trees faintly visiable in the distance. It seems to be the dead of a balmy summer night, and the harvest moon hangs full and orange low on the horizon. The wind seems to carry a sad voice singing wordlessly of loss. Confused-it was only sunset seconds ago!- you turn around. Behind you, you can see the mountain, the path, even your own footsteps....but it too is shrouded in darkness. Deciding that you must have been mistaken on the time, you shrug and walk onto the plains, finding the path to have faded into nothing before long. Dismayed, you realize it would be very easy to get lost, so you head toward the distant trees. Around the center of the field, you find a dried-up old pond. Seeing some movement in the center of the crater, you climb into the old water hole, and head toward its source. |
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| Deidre adopted from Sunshiney, unfortunately closed. |
| In the center of the extinct pond, you find a young girl with wide brown eyes admiring what seems to be an impossibly large nest of eggs. Her simple brown robes, combined with her dark hair make her impossible to disguish from the dried soil when on the grasslands above. You call a soft greeting, and she jumps to her feet with remarkable speed and agility, turning to face you with a determined expression and a defensive stance. She gives you a quick measuring glance, then relaxes a little. You introduce yourself, and after an awkward silence, she introduces herself as Deidre in a barely audible but very musical voice. You walk to the center of the cleared area and sit yourself down, and she slowly sits down accross from you, still carefully avoiding leaving her back open, you notice. A very suspicious girl. The two of you talk for a short while, and before long, she tells you the story of the Lostsinger Plains, as she calls it. "Many hundreds of years ago, there was a very lovely young song-sorceress of my kind who lived on these plains. In those days, the seasons and the weather were still subject to change here, and though she was alone here, she found it beautiful, and loved her home dearly. I do not know if all this is true, but I have found only one foundation of stone here on the plains. If there were others, they are gone with their stones scattered," she informs you as an aside, before continuing the tale. |
| "The lady-who, as legand would have it, was named Eadaoin-lived here many many moons, and eventually, a traveler did come to the plains in the guise of a young merchant lad. He and the lady fell in love, and the lived together in her little house, rearing a single girl-child who was beloved above all else by her mother. One day when the merchant was out in the wide world peddling his wares, and Eadaoin was indoors, the sorceress suddenly realized that she could no longer hear her little child playing with the pups outside. She hurried outdoors and found that the dogs were hiding away in their shelter, so frighted they shook and growled even at their mistress who was well known to them and who had a magic that normally kept them content, and that her little one was gone without a mark. The lady, understandably distressed, gathered her staff and hurried out to search for her daughter. This much only is known to history, but nothing else is for certain. Some say she is immortal, and searchs still for her babe, and others say she is lost forever on the plains, which I do not believe is likely, for I have heard that sorceresses could divine things that were distant, and would assume that she could find her way out, even if she had to charm a creature to lead her. My papa always held that she found her little one, but that the girl was killed, and that is her wailing on the wind. All that is certain is that since that night she went out to search, the dawn has never again come to the plains, and the weather is eternally of a summer night. It was her curse, or perhaps her wish for time to not have passed...." |
| Background from Absolute Background Textures Archive. Image of moon from Webshots. |
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