The Witch. And the Weaver.

[Grey-Moth]

(( Bits to be released to prevent spoilers, and perfect excuse to post lazily. Hurray! ))

"What a miserably long journey. I am so glad to depart these roads, again."

The Starweaver glanced back to the last fading signs of Avanthyr in the distance. It was odd, how the atmosphere soaked into the being, though. How the salt-air remained in every pore, and how far the seagulls would sometimes dare from their maiden city. Laughing in the sky above them all without a care in the world.

So contagious a laughter, even the elf had to join in. Just looking back on a long and hard road.

"You never know what you're really in for, do you. Until you've stepped to the very bottom. And to the very top, too." A comment slid to the seagulls amidst grinning lips.

The one armed elf lofting a hand to wave to them as they departed her company, or more then likely, simply her air-space. Too far and they'd risk the eyes of hawks and eagles, the duo of bird and elf to visit one another another time. The Starweaver found herself pausing just to look onto the glorious horizons surrounding her from but one hill top. Unmarked by anything but grass, flowers, weeds, and the humming of summer insects... she suddenly realized. Where was there to go, or do? Where was there to be, now?

Nowhere. She leaned into her cane of a sword heavily, and slid down until she could call herself seated. Letting grass taller then herself en-wrap her view about the edges, and look into the sky. The coming of stars. Her hour.

The witching hour. Where all her dreams were drenched in the old magic, and the rhythm of the world's pulse, rippling through every aching muscle in her body. Where everything stopped being certainty, and was left to spirits.

It'd all been for so long knee-jerk reactions, ever since she met the blight witch. The old crone. Her sickly form hunch backed, and marked by so many pocks it was hard to make out the silhouette of what was once some form of human being, or perhaps an elf. It hardly mattered any longer. She was 'crone', and that was all there was to her now. This poor diseased mess of a mad-woman.

What being could look on her. And not say to kill her? Who could think a mind deeper then the mere filth she rolled about within was present. A trail of Exigo's loggers led to here, hung from trees impaled by pikes and even covered in the fecal filth of their ogre slayers. What a disgusting display every moment had been, right down to the spirits of the old Viridale enraged and rattling the cages of the prime material's walls. Exploding with fury. All to find one woman, nestled atop that old hill?

Well. It was no wonder they'd all thought to draw blades. No wonder they'd considered her nothing but a mad woman obsessed with rot. And what do you do with a beast that has taken ill, but slay it, burn the body and pray that it does not spread to the herd. And so they'd turned in time to watch the old witch vanish into the woods, with that single purpose written across the Tuatha's blades, claws and instincts.

Burn the witch. And save the flock.

As the Starweaver knit her brow in thought, realizing her stomach had lurched with mob instinct. Struggling to understand what she'd witnessed, was more then a picture of carrion.

Still the call was echoed about them. Burn the witch. And save the flock. The elf struggled to find a reason not to. And struggled on, for several nights to sleep. She had to find the reason not to kill.

It was something Frazer had said, something that she hadn't expected of the intelligent though often-times borderline mad wizard of Exigo.

"You're only dealing with a symptom." he had said.

"And not the condition." she murmured.

So what precisely was the condition? What were the causes to bring everyone here? Not just them, not just the group of Tuatha, and Exigo climbing up a hill to defeat a so called monster. What were the strings, that brought her?

She had ached, and needed to know. The answers as cryptic as a sphinx's riddles. Finally. A challenge worth her mind to consider.

((Continued later. *Lazy moth*))

[Grey-Moth]

The Old Magic

The second meeting brought few answers. Only enough to give root to questions that quickly needled their way through determination, watered by doubts of the calls for blood lust. The Starweaver had relented a few details in earnest to those around her. Evelyn, Drynn, River and all those she called upon for glimpses of what the world outside the woods might desire and enlighten her by. None of them would have guessed how that chance meeting with the old witch would display of Talona's true purpose. How she'd nearly missed the point of all of this.

Starweaver nearly cursed herself for that note of shortsightedness. Even just looking back at it brought a hint of humiliation into her cheeks and eyes, her single delicate hand framing a number of stars in the night sky. When her hand peeled away, she could see a constellation all for herself to reminisce by. Her missing hand, part of the stars.

The second meeting of the witch, and the weaver. A mother crying and trembling in fear, clutching a bundle to her chest. The Starweaver was not very often that woman that would be moved for the plight of yet another woman surfacing from the villages, and cabins, ports or flying cities... but this woman had come all the way from her home, and stood at the edge of the Viridale.

And who isn't moved by the plight of a mother, that can still call some shred of their soul 'good'. The elf questioning her in polite tones if she may help, only for this woman to shake her head, apologize as it seems is beaten into every common woman to do. And like a nervous mouse considering if she could beat the cat to the cheese, or die trying, skittering to the edge of the woods.

The elf, of course, followed. The stage set merely a arena of stones, a wide circle. You never cross circles, in the woods. Not of toad stools, not of stones, you never cross a circle until you understand why it was made and today was no different from this superstitious, but entirely correct mind-set.

Her eyes had caught the sable wings of a crow as it landed behind a tree, and from behind emerged the hooked, boil riddled nose of the old crone. Smiling gleefully and acting as if the elf were not even there. Or maybe the one armed elf had become so one with the forest these days, that nothing viewed her a predator. Regardless, she watched as the mother had knelt before the crone and prostrated herself before Talona, lifting her bundle.

It was so quiet under that drape. Cold. Clinging to life. The elf's heart nearly stopped realizing what had brought her here. And so the two debated.

The elf had her rules. As did the crone. To debate and pursue was the Starweaver's nature, and the witch to hide and hate. It became abundantly clear, that there was no other person to turn to but this hag.

So the elf stood aside. All she could do was promise the mother, torn with grief and doubt that the elf would avenge all wrong against her. But no wrong came.

Well, that wasn't entirely right. The wind howled with specters beyond the Dale's curtains of the known, and the moon itself seemed to grow sickly as the witch worked old magic. The sort you don't learn in colleges, or reflecting on the nature of all life. This was the old magic scribbled in the veins of every mortal as a pile of nonsense until one turned inwards to their darkness, and outwards to the wraiths of hatred to make turn calligraphy into instructions.

And though it pained the Starweaver to do so, she stood aside. A hand on the mother's shoulder, to comfort her by. Just to let her know she was not alone as evil turned its eyes onto this small group. The mother discovered her trust in this brief moment was repaid, when the bundle began to move and cry. And then, she was gone, at behest of Talona's servant.

And the Starweaver left with a glimpse of not... not truly mercy. But method in the madness always present in the crone's spread smile of rotting teeth. That each particular glint of what she once thought was murder in the crone's eyes, was calculating her in return.

How long had this witch lived in seclusion, with nothing but her work to Talona to bring her out of the dirt and filth day in, and day out? How much did it take to break the spirit of a man, to become this?

The words exchanged were not all kind. The elf betrayed, that she and her acolytes had planned to hunt this witch down. A fair chance, to plea for her life. To hear out this husk of a woman.

"I struggle to find reason to let you live. That you are not the cause of strife in the old circle, but merely the symptom. Help me understand."

When they departed, the answer had become clear to her. As she argued with Nora, argued with Dalian, struggled to seize her fellow Tuatha into looking past the skin of this creature and see her place in nature.

The answer. That this old witch was no shell of a woman. She was just different. And in her difference, she had found a plan. A plan to avenge the woods from her interlopers. A plan to bring respect for her goddess.

And the elf found her purpose, though briefly lived in this confusion. Her purpose, once again. To calculate. To watch. To counter each move against. To hold the old secrets as tightly as she could to breast, and never let go. To perceive what men weren't meant to understand. Only exist alongside. Only fear, and respect.

The valley was not the place one found much of anything in fear, or respect. And so her struggle turned public, and once again. Fell to the arena of politics that these civilized people had grown so comfortable to think controlled the fringes of their world.

((Mooore moth stuff later.))