((Awesomeness ;D
Also go ahead and NPC some of the villagers, although I think you already know that))
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With an ache in her conscience, Sacora finally reached a small town well before dusk was midway. The town was way off the course she had planned to take, so she was most definitely lost on that little episode with the moth boy the previous night. Had this been under different circumstances, she would've felt relieved to have found this town. But she was still worrying about the fae. Did he accept her food? Was his sickness--whatever it is--getting better, or worse? Would he end up dying despite her efforts, which she had to admit, were not that much?
These thoughts continued to assail her even after she found herself graciously welcomed by the townspeople. They seemed a little on edge about something when they discovered she had come in through the forest path, but were otherwise friendly and showed her to the only inn and tavern there was in the place.
She had money enough for them and bought a room and a meal for the night. Nursing a cup of watered wine by the inn's fire as she waited for her meal, she found her thoughts going back once again to the moth fae out in the forest. Darkness would once again claim the land, and it would be cold out there. How would he manage? She had no way of knowing that one of his innate abilities included the construction of a silk cocoon in which he could sleep in peace and warmth. After all, she was not in the forest, not there to see what he was doing.
The loud peal of a church bell or something similar sounded out in the town streets, jolting Sacora out of her reverie. She then heard something like a town crier shouting something, and the heavy creak of metal as the town gate was being sealed. She headed for the window closest to the commotion and witnessed the event for herself.
"To your doors, to your doors!" the town crier was saying. " 'Tis curfew, and no one is allowed outside till daybreak comes again! This is mandatory!"
Sacora frowned. A curfew? It was not strange for a town to have a curfew, but...why so early? It was barely dark. Well, growing dark, but still. The hour was much too soon for such a thing. When the gate was done being sealed and the town crier moving off to repeat his announcement in another part of the town, Sacora settled back into her seat, thinking, wondering. Within the inn, the proprietor was already locking up the doors, barring any exit--or entrance--to the place.
Come to think of it, she was probably the only customer here. Usually an establishment like this had quite a following when it was dark, but here, it was eerily silent and empty.
Her food was soon ready and she sat down at a table to eat it. Feeling unnerved by the silence, she asked the innkeep after a few bites, "It's not usual for an inn to be so empty at dark. Could it be that your regular customers are barred from coming here in the evenings?"
The innkeep looked uneasy as he wiped the counter and answered her from where he stood, "Aye, lass. Unfortunately so." He coughed once and added, "Ye must've heard the curfew announcement."
"Indeed...I did." She took a few more bites. "Why is there a curfew in place?"
The innkeeper stopped what he was doing and sighed. He looked at her, conflicted, as if he wasn't sure whether to tell her the truth or not. Eventually he did, in a pained voice. "Truth is, lass, that there's a monster out in them woods."
Sacora paused in her eating. A monster?
"Aye, a monster. It all started just a few days back, when old man Shep was out n' about with his wife...they took the cart n' went to the town next us...and when they came back, Shep was dead with a look of horror twisted on his face, rest his soul."
She was beginning to fear for the moth boy. "What...what happened to him? What did the monster do to him?"
"Ah, I'd fergotten. His wife says he touched it, the cursed thing. And that's all it took. He was soon screaming and hollering in such a way ye'd think the devil was torturing him. And then he fell to the ground in horrible fits. She got him up into the wagon n' drove him back as fast as she could, but alas, he was dead when he reached home."
A monster that was so deadly, it would kill you with just the slightest contact...Sacora felt horrified, her worry for the lonely moth fae increasing tenfold. She wished there was some way she could warn him, but the doors were locked and there was a curfew on the entire town. It would look mightily suspicious of her if she disregarded their efforts at keeping their town, and everyone in it, safe. She could, on the other hand, tell the innkeeper of the moth boy...surely they could send a guard or something like that to retrieve him? To at least bring him to a safe place?
No. That was stupid. Fae were rare to run into. She would be branded a madwoman the moment she said something of the sort to this man. Sacora clenched her fist as she realized the only way she could help Miersck was to warn him the next morning, after leaving town. As things stood, no one would believe her if she told them about him, and it was against the rules to leave at the moment. She had no choice but to wait.
She quickly finished up her meal in silence and thanked the innkeeper for his hospitality. He nodded in acknowledgement of her gratitude and continued working a bit below stairs as she went up to rest in her room. She washed her face, undressed, slipped into a more comfortable nightgown, and went to bed early. She just didn't fancy stretching time any longer, awake and worrying about the moth fae.
Sacora was unable to tell how long she'd been asleep when she heard voices outside her door. They were not unnecessarily loud, but they were awfully obstructive in the way of continuing her sleep. Her eyes fluttered open the moment she heard them, muttering warily, with light tsks if disapproval. She recognized the innkeeper's voice along with a stout middle-aged woman's, probably his wife.
"...if they keep at it..."
"...but once and for all..."
"...thank Kia it took no other victims."
Sacora rose from her bed warily, her interest piqued at no other victims. They must have meant the monster. But she also liked to know why they were out and about near her room so late. She walked barefoot to the door and opened it a crack, revealing the forms of the innkeeper and a stout middle-aged woman as she'd guessed standing before the window at the end of the hall, which was just outside her room, in their nightclothes.
"Ah," the innkeeper said, flushing with embarrassment. "We're sorry lass. Didn't mean to wake ye."
"Did we bother you?" the woman asked her, concernedly.
"No," Sacora responded, then exited the room and looked out the window with them. The streets were dark, but for a crowd of men clamoring below with torches and all manners of tools that could be used as blunt force weapons or things to impale with. Frowning, she said, "I thought there was a curfew?"
"Aye, but there's been talk of a hunt fer the monster a while now," the innkeeper explained. "Everyone's been itchin' to get it over with so there's none else claimed by the beast. The men in particular have been very anxious...seems they're caving in, tonight."
"Will the guards let them?" Sacora wondered aloud.
"As you can see, they're getting ready to open the gate," the woman pointed out, guiding Sacora's eyes in the direction of the quickly moving group of torches heading for the gates.
Sacora frowned. Well, at least the monster would be taken care of...then again, they might not find it at all. Forests were excellent places to hide in. "Do they even know what the monster looks like, to try and hunt it down like that?"
"Why of course," the innkeeper said. "Shep's wife told everyone! She said not to be deceived. It's got the form of a boy, a winged boy...but just a touch'll do you in right quick, just like it had with Shep."
A boy, a winged boy.
A sense of dread fell over Sacora as surely as if the innkeeper had just spelled out her own doom.
Or rather, the moth boy's.
"No..." She ran down the stairs, much to the surprise of her hosts, regardless of the fact that she was leaving all her things up in her room, and running about barefoot in only a nightdress at that. She tried the front door of the inn--with no luck--and forced her way through a relatively easy back door in the kitchen instead. Her hosts were yelling and making a big commotion back inside the building, but she ignored them and ran all the way through the town, to the slowly opening gate and the eager group of armed men preparing for a hunt. She had to warn the moth boy...to get him out of danger...anything but let him be hunted!
"Stop!" she was calling out to the people. They barely noticed her, caught up as they were in their own reverie. "Stop, you're making a big mistake! The boy does not need to be hunted--he needs to be helped!"
Some people heard her and the news of what she'd said spread through their group like wildfire. The men paused a moment to regard her; in confusion, in awe, in suspicion, in growing rage. If she could stop the hunt before it even started, all the better...if not...well, she still remembered the path back to that dry forest clearing. Hopefully the moth boy wouldn't be there. She could only pray.
