New Deliveries|Darkthrone, New Morilanta

[Skittlebug]

"Well, I had to go quite often because mother..." he cuts off, thinking how he'll never see his mother again and his eyes well up, "she would make us go."

[Kender Bard]

The woman nodded, not bothered by his tears or paying them any real notice. "Who did you worship?" she asked him.

[Skittlebug]

Pallab wipes his eyes with the back of his sleeve, already quite stained from tears. "Soahc, everyone on the island did."

[Kender Bard]

"Well, then," the woman murmured. "After you've finished hearing a little about our Forces, would you like me to take you to see the priests of Soahc? Here we call him the Changebringer. I think that if I tell them to be nice to you, you would be treated well. Does that sound good?"

[Skittlebug]

"I've never heard that title before," the boy still isn't sure what to make of all this, if he was a slave, why was she treating him so nicely? "I think I would like that, yes."

[Kender Bard]

"Then we'll go," she said simply and ushered him back into the bulk of the children.

Their sermon was... rather boring. The priests who talked to them seemed to just want to familiarize them with Morilantan's view on the Forces, giving them strange new names, explaining their roles in the workings of the world. They explained Love and Evil but only in the most cursory way. The children were bored, but frightened too, so payed again even if their minds wandered.

Afterwards, three other children and Pallab were separated from the rest. The bulk were led elsewhere.

"Let me better introduce myself since I know your names now," the woman who fed them stated. "I am Melissa. You four, I think, are the most promising of your peers, so you'll be given the treat of time spent with Soahc. Odd, really. You all follow him."

"Everyone on the island did," a little girl a couple years younger than Pallab murmured, looking down and trembling slightly.

"What a queer world you came from," Melissa mused. "Well, come along." She led the children in front of her, directing them on where to go, where to turn, until they were brought into the smoky den of the Soahcians. The priests here looked at the children with expressions ranging from curiosity to annoyance.

"Seline!" Melissa called out. One of the priests separated from the others and sauntered over. She was a younger woman, with long brown hair and cherubic face with large, expressive brown eyes. "Seline, will you watch over these children and make them comfortable? They're our newest additional to the national family all the way from Firegem."

"Firegem!" the girl exclaimed. "Tell me all about that place."

[Skittlebug]

Despite everything, Pallab finds himself a bit more at ease with Seline. "It's warmer, and everyone follows Soahc, er, the Changebringer."

[Kender Bard]

"Oh, good, you remembered his name here," Seline remarked with enthusiasm.

"It's pretty and there's ocean all over," the girl from before added softly.

The other two children added their own opinions as well.

"I used to live by the ocean too," Seline remarked. "Well. I guess I do now, too, but I don't leave the temple much, these days. Say, do you children like stories?"

[Skittlebug]

"I do, as long as they're interesting," Pallab replies, deciding that he definitely likes her. She didn't seem like a pirate or some evil person.

[Kender Bard]

"Come here," she urged the children and led them to a secluded corner of the room. "Let's all sit." She settled herself. "And I'll tell you a story. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there a was a little girl who was treated very badly by her family. They owned a farm on the very edge of their homeland's territory. Every time she tried to help, though, she would do something wrong. The poor girl was very clumsy, you see. She was born on a farm but couldn't do any farm chores."

"What's a farm?" the little girl asked.

Seline looked surprised. "You've never seen a farm?"

[Skittlebug]

Pallab shakes his head, agreeing with the younger girl, "What's a farm?"

[Kender Bard]

"Oh Soahc," Seline sighs. "It's a place where food is grown."

"But-"

"Just listen to the story," Seline told them. "So this poor clumsy girl was the bane of her parents. Every day she would try their hardest, and every day they would just get angrier and angrier. 'Sometimes I wish you were never born,' her mother told her one day. And the little girl cried and cried because she didn't know how to make her parents love her. Well! The next day, the mean old parents decided to get rid of their helpless daughter. 'She's just another mouth to feed, and she can't even do her own share,' they reasoned. So they put her in a wagon and sent her off to a distant relative."

[Skittlebug]

Pallab makes a face at that, though his circumstances were certainly different, he could relate.

[Kender Bard]

"This relative didn't beat the girl or yell at her, but she had her own children to worry about, and so didn't pay attention to the girl," Selene went on. "So one day the little girl ran away. She ran and ran, not knowing where she was going or why. Eventually she found herself lost on a road heading east, cold and hungry. She collapsed. She would have surely died, but a woman traveling on the road saw her and picked her up, taking her to a camp where there was a warm fire and food and blankets. She fed the little girl and made sure that she was kept comfortable as she regained her strength through the night."

"When she woke the next day, the woman was preparing to leave. 'Don't go!' the girl cried, for this woman was the nicest person she had ever met. The woman frowned at her and said, 'You don't want to go where I'm going. Nobody is nice there.' 'Nobody is nice to me now,' the girl wailed. 'Well then,' the woman said. 'Perhaps you can come with me after all. You won't find niceness where we go, but nobody is nice, not really. Not deep down inside. And where we go, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that you're strong. And if you're strong, you can make your own happiness.'"

[Skittlebug]

Pallab has a thought and gives Seline an odd look. Used to speaking his mind he asks, "Is the story about you?"