Private Tales A Fault Not In Our Stars

A private roleplay only for those invited by the first writer
Elinyra hummed a few stray bars of some half-remembered childhood lullaby as she set down a basket and sat staring into the dark waters of a still pond. It was a memory pool; one of several hidden away deep in the surreal forests of Tir Na Nog. Once her own memories had been locked away here by a malicious duanann, but no more. The only remembrance that rested in the bottom of the pool now was the collective memory of this blight-born land.

She knew now, of course, that this wasn't really the mythical land of the eternally young. But this place had been created at the behest of a powerful fae, and it retained that magical identity independent of its creator. To many, it was a cursed land: A sliver of Aerethil forged out of grief and rage. A place inhabited by the damned. But to her, it would always be Tir Na Nog. It would always be her home.

The season of the stag was over. It had been Vyr's thirst for destruction - including all he had created - that had led to his downfall. Elinyra had often wondered since then what happened to such beings when they died. Would this habitat he'd created eventually cease to exist? Would she and the other blight-altered people, part plant and part kith, simply die out?

An uncertain future lay ahead for all of them. Other afflicted druids and folk taken from various parts of the world had settled here after the blighting's end, like a leper colony that had no where else that would accept them. Now that they'd won their freedom from a tyrant, they were suffering a moral rift. Many felt it was the natural order that they should all die from their affliction, so that nature could set itself right again. Elinyra scoffed at the notion. She had been forced through madness and despair to look past some farcical idea of 'natural order'. The only truth was that of survival. Prosperity, for the lucky.

The basket sitting next to her stirred with a quiet coo. Elinyra lifted the blanket covering it and smiled at the tiny face blinking drowsily up at her. Her future. She wanted to believe the future for her people, if they could be called such. The babe was healthy, but there were signs that she had the same blight in her blood as her mother did. Small things like a dark green ring around her slate grey irises and black-edged fingernails. Elinyra had seen those who succumbed to the blight become no more than maddened monsters. Even without the duanann's corrupting influence, she feared the same would happen to Fielynn.

Some days that fear edged on desperation.

Elinyra gently ran her fingers over Fielynn's face and hummed again to soothe her. After Vyr's defeat her own powers of death and decay had begun to wane. Without it, she wondered how she could protect that future. She closely guarded the secret that, after all was said and done, she missed having that power.

Sedorohein
 
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"What a beautiful child. There is something truly magical about youth."

The voice came from an older gentleman who took a seat next to her, seemingly having snuck up on her. The man, while tall, stood with a noticeable hunch as time seemed to weigh him down. Only a few stray wisps of grey hair remained on the top of his head, but his bushy goatee more than made up for it. A smoking pipe hung from his mouth, dangerously closed to falling out.

"Unravaged by time, only possibilities of the future...Before anyone can beat up on your old bones." He chuckled as he patted himself on the thigh before taking the seat.

More importantly for Elinyra, the entire left side of his face was corrupted by the blight, but seemed to stop perfectly at the halfway point of his face.

The area they were in seemed to have stilled, as they were the only three in this scenic moment. The old man looked out over the water before taking a long drag from his pipe and slowly releasing it.

"It won't be easy for them. The world is not kind to the strange and foreign."

With all of that said, the old man turned to lock his eyes firmly on Elinyra, for all of the old wrinkles, tan marks, and even scars from this figure, his eyes had an energetic glow about them that would not die down. He sat like this, watching, waiting to see Elinyra's next choice.

Elinyra Derwinthir
 
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The voice startled Elinyra out of her reflections. She used to have a bond with the plants and beasts of Tir Na Nog that had granted her a measure of supernatural awareness, but that too was a thing of the past. It was surprisingly uncomfortable getting re-accustomed to normal.

"Indeed. Born into a new place, as a new and free people.... Our children will have possibilities that we can't even dream of." Fielynn relaxed and settled back into gentle slumber. Elinyra smiled and withdrew her hand from the basket.

If they survive, she considered privately. Fielynn was the first blightborn child to her knowledge, and no one knew what that meant for her.

Elinyra cast the stranger a welcoming smile, though something about this old man bothered her. She knew everyone from the village, but she didn't recognize him. He must have been one of the few remaining stragglers drawn into the woods by the call of the blight in their veins.

By the looks of him, he'd been suffering from the blight for awhile. He was fortunate he still had his mind intact. But she felt there was more to it than that. The light in his eyes told of a greater depth than could be divined from a glance. He reminded her of one of the wizened druids who always seemed to guard secrets behind their eyes. Perhaps he was.

"In my experience, the world is kind to very few. The Otherworld, anyway." She gestured vaguely past the pond, towards the wooded edge of the glade. She wasn't sure how the duanann had made this tiny realm slightly separate from the rest of Aerethil, like a dark pearl embedded in an oyster itself embedded in an even vaster ocean. But the boundary between Tir Na Nog and the Otherworld was misty and ever-shifting. Secret doors around the world offered entry only begrudgingly. Exits were even harder to find. She hoped, perhaps a bit naively, that it would remain their sanctuary.

"I daresay their world makes little difference to us right now. Their wars, their petty rivalries... I suppose that's why he created this place as he did."

She shook her head with a quiet chuckle. She didn't need to burden her company with wishful nonense and questions about the past. She hadn't even asked him his name or where he came from.

Instead she turned to him and said,

"My name is Elinyra. I came from a far away forest, though I do not remember how I came here. I was once a reaper. An enthralled guardian. What is your story?"

Sedorohein
 
"Oh pleasure. I'm Carnaduin, but friends just call me Carn. I...I suppose I do a bit of everything, I was once a healer."

The old man's eyes lingered on the child for a moment before turning back to look out over the water. The area was beautiful and the man seemed to perfectly fit in with the scenery, creating a sense of peace and harmony, but that peace was shattered with the next words.

"Oh, it makes a big difference. For all the duanann's powers that is the one thing they were never able to perfect...How to completely separate themselves from mortals."

He reached out his hand and the plant life around pulled ever so slightly closer, while the water in the bond began to slowly circle around causing the first disruptions that the pond and its lily pads had likely experienced in some times.

"My story...It is one of failure. I called myself a healer. I want to take away the pain and suffering of those around me, but...pain is not so easily removed. It will find you no matter how hard you flee from it. In the end, it found me and my family...It broke me...It broke us."

Carn's eyes slowly turned back to Elinyra, his eyes a mix of sadness and manic fear. "I hope you and yours never have to experience such."

Elinyra Derwinthir
 
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"Welcome to this little corner of Tir Na Nog, Carnaduin. I don't believe I've seen you in Pwllachyr before but you are welcome in the village if you'd like a place to stay. You may find some kindred souls there."

Fielynn babbled in her sleep but otherwise had no interest in the goings-on outside her basket.

"Oh, it makes a big difference. For all the duanann's powers that is the one thing they were never able to perfect...How to completely separate themselves from mortals."

There was something oddly prescient about that statement, but she was too awe-struck by his manipulation of the pond and its flora to respond immediately. As the water in the memory pool swirled, it seemed to draw her back in time. Elinyra thought back to her life before her blighting only rarely, but it struck a distant chord when Carn mentioned that he had also been a healer. It was a tale she knew only too well.

She absently cradled her right hand, now completely coated in a bark-like skin. She remembered that black wound made by the corrupted dagger Falthedyn. The pain. The torment. The madness inflicted on anyone cut by its blade. The death that had followed in Elinyra's footsteps. Now she could affect neither the energies of life nor death.

She swore for a moment she saw a distorted reflection of her previous self in the rippling water; and behind her, a familiar form cloaked in deepest shadow. She forced herself to blink, to will the spectre back into the past.

The pool grew still again, but Carn's troubling words hung over it like a gloomy mist. Elinyra wanted more than anything to believe that she had buried the pains of the past along with Falthedyn, but it was always far too easy for old doubts to resurface. Seeing that haunted look in the old man's eyes managed to redouble them. She looked away and her gaze fell over her daughter's sleeping form. She rallied a little from that fragile figure of hope.

"We are all just beginning to pick up the pieces of our broken lives. I think- I'd like to think it is those strands of pain and loss that have brought us together and allowed us to replace what the blight stole from us."

She'd said the same to the newly-appointed village council of Pwllachyr, hoping to promote some optimism for their future. Many weren't sure whether to consider the 'daughter of Tir Na Nog' a hero at the midnight hour or just the lesser of two evils. Those outside had once hunted her for what she'd done. For what she'd become.

She shifted restlessly, her long green dress flowing like interwoven leaves around her as she stared out at the pool. "You strike me as someone well-versed in the lore of the fae folk. Do you think they can really... die?"

She was sure she'd seen it with her own eyes. But she'd had a lot of reason to doubt her own senses.

Sedorohein
 
"Oh yes, they can die...It's just really hard to do it. It's important to remember that the duanann aren't gods, even though they may like to think so. They're just...old."

Carnaduin's eyes had watched the water closely as Elinyra relived her own demons. Whether he could see them was unclear, but something had caught his attention. As he explained they were old, the old man also took a moment to stretch and as he did, the blight on his skin seemed to grow and then recede in rhythm like some sort of breath.

"Just imagine if you were centuries even millennia old. Even if you were some type of dunce, you would be bound to pick up some tricks. Of course, there are also drawbacks to being that old."

He raised his hand again and the water stop spinning, immediately, suddenly eerily still like a piece of mirror reflecting the two of them.

"You said that you were picking up broken pieces, but what if you couldn't even carry all the pieces? That is the duanann...Poor existence if you ask me...But then the REAL FUN BEGINS!!"

The last words spoken by the old man came out low and deep with a strange reverb that shook the air around them. Oddly, the still water started showing...cracks like someone had punched the surface and it splintered like that of glass.

The strange reverb voice continued, "OnCE ALLL thE PiecEs are broken, THEN YoU Try anD pUt theM bAcK togetHER. BUT THE PIECES DON't FiiiT! WHat COMes OuT is NEW aaaanndd EXCITing. UNcharTED terRitORy, but so much POSSIBILITY."

The more he spoke the more cracks appeared in the water as the old man slowly turned his vision onto Elinyra. He still looked the same, but the sparking eyes from before now housed something deeper, their own cracks...a sense of madness.

If Elinyra were to look to the water, she would see a figure looming behind the man. The cracked surface made it difficult to get a full look at him, but the figure was tall, almost uncomfortably so with large horns and glowing hair that fell to their back. The figure was beautiful, but cracks made the man come across as warped and dangerous.

"Of course, those are just some of my thoughts. Don't take them too seriously."

And with that ordinary sentence, the large figure vanished. The water returned to normal, and the tension in the air dispersed. Everything went back to normal so suddenly that one would be forgiven if anything had even actually happened at all.

Elinyra Derwinthir
 
"Oh yes, they can die...It's just really hard to do it. It's important to remember that the duanann aren't gods, even though they may like to think so. They're just...old."

"As old and cruel as the wind and the sea --- that which fills sails and yearning hearts with dreams of sweetened horizons, only to damn the good to depths beyond mercy," she quoted the only line she remembered from an old book read many years ago.


Elinyra gasped as her gaze snapped to the cracks forming across the memory pool. She wanted to shout, to demand for him to stop, but his voice was all around them, and his eyes...

Vyr's eyes had been cold and calculating and world-weary. These, she thought, were a different sort of dangerous.

The memory pools were an interesting creation. Vyr had used them to hide his victims' past from them, but they could also reveal hidden truths. Elinyra knew this, and so the weird reflection in the pool's disrupted surface was not lost on her. Jumping to her feet, she snatched the basket and backtracked a few paces to create some distance between them. Her heart was pounding, and the blight in her reacted; but no vicious scythe grew from her hand, no plants rose up in her defense. The only power she had to call upon was the age-old instinct of a mother defending her child.

Then, like an abrupt wakening from a nightmare, all was as it had been. Birds called from the wood. Insects akin to wasps buzzed busily between flowers hidden deep in the shadows of the bizarrely mutated trees. A confused frog dropped from a lilypad into the water. The baby fussed.

Elinyra managed to collect herself, though her gaze never left her visitor while she picked up Fielynn in her bundle of blankets. A fae, no doubt, but of what sort she was uncertain. Malicious? Perhaps. Capricious? More than likely. She could only guess as to what his insane outburst meant.

"If your intention was to surprise me, then consider me surprised," she said evenly while rocking the babe back to calm. She considered asking him his purpose here, but what she knew of the fae folk suggested he wasn't likely to give her a truthful answer unless the question was intruiging enough. So instead she said,

"If you've come to challenge the duannan who lives here, I'm afraid you'll find it a disappointing contest."

Sedorohein
 
"Hmm? Oh, that? No, I just got a little excited, my apologies. Although, I do enjoy making an entrance, so maybe I'll just count that as my real entrance...You know, I have a reputation and everything."

Carnaduin turned his eyes to the babe and frowned before looking slightly guilty. He waved his hand again an mini purple stars appeared to float in front of the baby's eyes and try to calm them down.

"Sorry about that...never been all too good with kids."

Ever since the show of power, the watering hole around them had grown still. But unlike before, when the old man seemed to meld with the environment around him perfectly, now he stood juxtaposed against it all. It was like the water, trees, grass, and even air were dangerously still trying to prepare for his next bout of emotion.

"And as to the last question, no. I'm not a real fan of challenges or contests...unless I know I will win them. But, I am aware of their fate, which trust me, has more than a few of my acquaintances up in a tizzy...It's nice. It has been far too long since any of them have been scared."

The old man hopped to his feet with very little effort as he turned fully to her.

"Although, I don't think they have much to worry about...You don't seem to have the juice anymore...It's all dying you know."

Elinyra Derwinthir
 
"I had feared as much." She didn't want to admit it, but at her core she knew. She had felt it on the wind. She had seen it and heard in the tiniest of things: the notes of birdsong softly turning flat; the glow of the bioluminescent flora and fauna growing ever-so-slightly dimmer. In an act of bitter irony, the forest was losing its vitality. A dream that had lost its dreamer.

"Curious to me that the fae would care about the fate of a rogue. I was under the impression he wasn't particularly a popular figure amongst his kin," she continued with a slight smile of amusement. "Do the Courts believe that I harbor his grudge against them?"

Fielynn had stopped her fussing and was now batting ineffectually at the illusory stars. Elinyra stroked the sparse hairs on her head affectionately.

"Believe me... I don't. I simply want to protect my home."

In truth, she wanted her home to thrive. Not to consume the forests beyond as its creator had envisioned, but become a place with a future for those that inhabited it.

She cast the fae a suspicious look. "Tell me, and tell me truly. Are you here to ensure that death comes to pass?"

Sedorohein
 
"Care about some fate? No, most of them didn't even know his name. It's not about the identity, but the action itself. I might have told you that Duannan die, but the truth is also that it is very rare to come from someone outside of our own realm. So when it does happen, people take notice, and not the good kind."

He let the unsaid warning hang in the air before moving to the next topic.

"As for me...ensuring death, that seems a bit extreme, but if you think I death as simple change then yes maybe I do. The truth is, some important things are already dead, I'm offering a chance for...rebirth if you will."

Carnaduin reached out and lightly flicked a nearby plant and the specimen grew and bloomed, but as it did its green colors morphed into magical purple and blues and the plant's shape seemed to stretch and warp to that of some sort of plan imagined by a child.

"You said you want to protect your home. Well, you are going to need some help to do that. Who better than to help than me?"

Elinyra Derwinthir
 
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Her expression softened somewhat. Regardless of what Carnaduin's motivations might be, he wasn't wrong. Tir Na Nog needed help that none of its people could could provide. Still, the Fair Folk weren't exactly known for their charity.

"What I stand to gain from your help is obvious. I wonder what you plan to gain from it," she remarked, her curious gaze shifting to the enchanted plant he'd crafted. It wasn't just that it was beautiful to look at; it had a very faint vibration, like a musical note echoing through the earthen silence of a cave.

One of the first things the blight had taken from Elinyra was her ability to commune with the spirits the druids revered. Losing her ability to feel through the plants and animals here had made her world go maddeningly quiet. To hear life again... to feel it again was almost a shock.

Little Fielynn seemed to have felt something too, or Elinyra imagined so as the baby flung her arms out and squirmed in her mother's grasp. Elinyra lowered her back into the basket and distracted her with a small rattle lying in its woven fibers before turning her attention back to Carnaduin.

"What is the price of your help?"

Sedorohein
 
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"Honestly, not much at this moment, I'm offering because it is all a little peculiar...I guess, what I get his people with a bit more confidence."

The plant warped back to normal as the surrounding area was clearly not a fan of this arrival at their home. The vibrations stopped, but Carnaduin did smile at the child's reaction. He could also appreciate a fan of his work.

"I want to give you...and the others the power to really do something with this life. Like I said, you are all a completely new creation and no one knows what exactly will happen. I don't want you all to curl up in balls and slowly die. I want to see what you would dream for if nothing could hold you back."

This time, it was the water that warped, it looked like the liquid became a viscous, mucus-like texture and beneath the surface showed a flowing starlight scenery with strange and exotic fish darting through the strange texture.

"Of course, I want it for you and all of the others. This means, that if I were to help, then the first step would be getting the remaining residents of Tir Na Nog to also agree to my help. In return, I give you the power to ensure your child and all the others get to grow up living a life of joy and happiness."

Elinyra Derwinthir
 
He knew the words to cut through whatever defenses she might have put up, whatever doubt she might have clung to. To have the power to ensure her child had the opportunity to grow up, to ensure that her people would get to live, was not an offer she could afford to refuse. A glance at the transformed pond only reinforced that notion. What if she could make Tir Na Nog into the paradise she imagined?

But as always, the path forward wouldn't be so simple as an agreement struck on a calm day. There was still a rather stubborn problem spearheaded by an old human druid named Mannan.

"I will speak with the others. I have some sway with my people, but I cannot promise you that all of them will agree to your help. There is one group that I'm sure will reject your assistance."

She cast him a coy look. "I hope you're good at making friends."

Sedorohein
 
Carnaduin feigned offense as he looked around the area like he was looking for someone to support him. "Is that not what I have been doing all this time? Tell me, don't we feel like friends now?" He asked with a playful smile.

But he knew her to be correct, the chances he convinced them all were slim, but it did not matter. He just needed the majority, and then ever so slowly the ones who denied him would be forced to adapt or fade away, such was the fate of all dreams.

"I'm sure I can help. I've been told I'm very persuasive. Me and this Mannan simply need to share a drink and we will be old friends before they know it."

At least, that is what Mannan should hope for if he was smart because Sedo had plenty of other ways to convince the man...none of them very friendly.

Elinyra Derwinthir
 
She decided to take his first question as a rhetorical one.

"Good. Don't get me wrong, he's likeable enough. Just set in old fatalistic ways that have no meaning now," she explained and picked up the softly rattling basket. She then gestured toward a worn trail with her arboreal arm. The sunlight that managed to get this far down into the surrounding canopy barely made blotches on the packed earth. It cut through a mixed undergrowth of ferns and spiralling fungi that, on first glance, appeared like half-buried pine cones.

"Pwllachyr is only a short walk from here, though I doubt we'll meet anyone else along this trail."

Once Elinyra had made sure her precious bundle was settled in the swaying cradle, she waited for her new acquaintance to join her.

"I should warn you that the villagers will probably be afraid of you once they learn what you are. Some have never really overcome the fear and confusion they suffered at the hands of a fae. I have met enough fae to understand that you are not all the same. But... 'once bitten by a snake, one tends to see coiled shadows beneath every stone', as the saying goes."

Sedorohein
 
Carnaduin groaned as he shambled along to come to Elinyra's side, even for revealing his identity, he still seemed dead set on maintaining the shuffling pace of the elderly.

Although his speed and initial appearance were elderly, the now bright smile and intense gaze of his eyes denoted a youth that was impossible for one truly old.

He quickly dismissed her warning, "Oh, everyone is afraid of what they don't understand, especially the fae. I'm known as an enigma even to my brethren...All this to say, I'm used to it."

The fear would slowly fade once they realized they all had something to gain from him, such was the way of mortals. Fear was strong, but often greed, hope, and desire were stronger.

"So...who is the father?"

Elinyra Derwinthir
 
Elinyra cast her companion a sideways glance at his question, letting the ambient birdsong fill the silence for a few moments before she said matter-of-factly,

"There isn't one. The circumstances of her birth were... unusual." Unusual by her estimations, anyway. What was out of the ordinary to a magical creature?

"The world faded out to me for a time after Vyr's death. It was like a strange dream; one where I couldn't move or see anything but darkness, nor hear anything but silence. But I could feel the passing of days in the warmth of sunlight and raindrops and wind, and I could sense the fluttering of birds' wings and the soil beneath me.

"Then, I heard her crying, as loudly and clearly as my own heartbeat, and I knew it was me she was crying for. That's when I saw the world again. She brought me back."

She smiled and looked down at the babe in the basket, who had been lulled back to sleep by her mother's walking. Then she glanced back at Carnaduin with a puzzled expression.

"Excuse my ignorance, but do fae have parents?"

Sedorohein
 
How...very interesting! Carnaduin turned his intense gaze towards the basket housing the sleeping child and remained there for some time. His face did not give any of his thoughts on the matter away, but it was at least clear that he had taken an interest in the matter.

At Elinyra's question, he looked back at her and smiled, "Why of course! Everything has to have parents, or I guess I should say a parent. Everything must come from something. Now some of us fae aren't as...beholden to our parents when it comes to looks or personality though."

He remembered that he had looked nothing like his father or mother, but his eldest brother might as well have been a clone. His affinities had played a large hand in that.

"Alas, mine are no longer with us, so the answer is no. You will not be invited to any family get-together. I doubt you would have survived one anyway, "
he quipped with an insane grin.

Elinyra Derwinthir
 
"That is a lot more reasonable than some of the stories I've heard; faeries just sprouting out of ponds and flowers and stones because the sun or moons shone down on them at some especially auspicious time of the year." She chuckled. (Though she thought she'd leave out the stories about mortal children being kidnapped and replaced by changelings or some such nonsense.)

"That's all right. I've never been much good at family gatherings anyways." She had a feeling he was being more serious about that than it seemed. She also had a notion she'd regret asking for any details.

"I'm sorry you no longer have your parents."

A cluster of rooftops presently poked out like tawny wooden spindles from the clusters of trees. "That's Pwllachyr there."

Elinyra paused for a moment to collect her thoughts before venturing into the village. She was genuinely curious to see how this introduction would turn out.


Mannan's abode was primitive, even compared with Pwllachyr's other humble dwellings -- more of a burrow than a house, with moss and tree bark lashed together as a front door. Indeed, Mannan must have looked like a grizzled grey bear as he stumbled out of his abode with a roaring yawn.

"I greet the morning," he said and stretched facing the sun, even though it was early afternoon. His meditations often went on for longer than he realized, but seeking wisdom was best accomplished at an unhurried pace. Even near what he knew would be the end of his time on Arethil, he kept the same measured rhythm to his life.

His customary smile fell when he turned to look at the empty trough next to his home. He'd built it for his long-time equine companion, who had passed to the ravages of the blight months ago. He was saddened by the loss, but he knew that it was simply the fate of living things to ebb and flow like the tides. He considered this whole series of events to be just that: another wave in a vast ocean in which he was merely a single fish.

"All is as it is meant to be," he reminded himself with a deep, steadying breath and closed his eyes. Upon opening them again, he saw the one thing that gave him doubt coming out of the trees. He repeated the mantra to himself in a low grumble of dissatisfaction.

She claimed she used to be a normal wood elf, akin to some of the other druids that had been transformed by the blight. She reminded him more of a wolf in sheep's clothing. Just over a year after they'd regained their freedom from a corrupted fae, she'd come out of the woods with a child of dubious origin. Now she was coming out of the woods with... an elderly man? Probably of dubious origin.

He sighed and willed his old bones towards the newcomer. Some days the druid was almost disappointed the blight hadn't claimed him yet.

Sedorohein
 
Carnaduin shot her a confused look when she mentioned the stories but decided not to say anything...Why would those stories be lies? Could not the ponds, the stone, and the sunlight be the parents? Mortals found it hard to understand that the fae was so intrinsically tied to nature that in those stories, the stone was actually probably just a fae with a strong earth affinity. It was all rather obvious to him.

The remainder of their journey came in silence, but upon arrival to Pwallychr, a smile spread on Carnaduin's face. What a lovely little settlement...if these people enjoyed living like half animals. These negotiations might be easier than he thought.

He did not have to wait long to find this Mannan judging by the large figure coming towards them.

"Ah, Elinyra, you did not tell me you kept walking bears!...No, this must be Mannan, excellent! Please follow me to have a discussion, my friend."

Without waiting for a response, Carnaduin continued his walk right back to the home that Mannan had come from.

Elinyra Derwinthir
 
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