Local lore is surprisingly accurate

[what_greater_weapon]

Noelle finds that having a village is quite a pain. So she doesn't have one. Instead she travels. This isn't as easy as the sentence makes it sound. She has several sets of clothes that fit her just badly enough to make her look androgynous instead of feminine, while still being practical and not in her way. It's perhaps not what her fashion choices would be if choosing for aesthetics, but her fashion choices are not based around aesthetics. Instead it's to keep the idiots that think a lone reasonably pretty young woman is a tempting and vulnerable target to a minimum.

Not that it's a foolproof strategy. People are stupid, and she's apparently rather pretty. Not that anyone should try anything; while she might be tempting, she is not vulnerable. She has a sword at her hip that she knows how to use beyond 'pointy end goes in the person,' a small crossbow that looks deceptively useless when it is anything but, and a few knives that benefit from baggy clothes and the ability to hide knives therein. Anyone that thinks she is a tempting and vulnerable target and that they should act accordingly will be corrected. Possibly with the knives, if they especially deserve it.

She's actually in the middle of that right now. Well, sort of. She is working on being in the middle of that right now. In order to get there she has to find the guy. He had some wandering hands that went to unsanctioned locations, and after she broke his finger he, well, ran. Normally she might let him go, call it even, but she realized the next morning that he fit the description of a bandit with a sizable bounty on him. And he did have a mysteriously large purse for a man with that little class. It fits. And he's an asshole, so she can go retrieve him, dump him at the feet of the local lawmen that are looking for him, collect the lovely bounty, and be on her way.

One problem: the asshole ran into a thing the locals call the Witchwood. She realizes rather too late that it is appropriately named. The trees must be moving, or moving her, because she passed by that creek with the rocks in that particular formation and the slightly broken tree two hours ago, and she was following the sun. This should not happen.

Well. She has travelling rations with her, and she can find water reliably well (especially if the creek keeps showing up) but if she's trapped in here forever there's not much she can do about it. If it takes longer than a week she might set the forest on fire, but she's not that desperate. She'll let the magic woods lead her around if they want to, she guesses. Not that she has a choice.

She scrapes marks in trees with her least favorite knife, because it's not like she has anything better to do, and she wants to know how many times trees will repeat themselves. Scrape scrape. Wander wander.

Comments

[what_greater_weapon]

That says some worrying things for the owner of this castle, certainly. If there is an owner of the castle. It's possible that the owner of the castle is long dead, and no one has found the castle until now due to the magic forest. That. Seems to want her to be here, for some reason, and won't let her leave.

When dinner arrives, she looks at the tray and asks, "What do you want me to do, exactly? Just. Stay here forever? Because, while this place is great, I would like to go to other places, too. ... And then come back. Because magic castle. But this feels very deliberate, I feel like I was picked, what am I picked for?"

[pythbox]

The tray raises itself up a tiny bit and then droops down again, with a helpless little shake of its teapot. One can almost hear the sigh.

There are two beautiful glass windows in the library. The tray tiptoes with utmost quietness over to the closer one, tilts itself up slightly (not enough to spill any dinner), and raises its teapot with a side-to-side scanning motion as though looking for something. Whatever it's looking for seems to be just outside the window, but too close to the wall to be seen from inside.

[what_greater_weapon]

She has a hunch, now. If she's correct, how does she want to play this, nice and polite or distinctly not?

... Polite, she thinks. She hasn't been hurt, or - honestly even mildly inconvenienced. Oh no, she's been taken to a nice castle with fascinating language puzzles and nice clothes and comfy beds and good food and excellent weapons, whatever will she do. She'd still like to leave, eventually, but that's different than being upset about her current treatment.

She walks quietly to the window, opens it, and pokes her head out. Is anyone there?

[pythbox]

A glimpse of a long dark tail, disappearing over the edge of the roof.

[what_greater_weapon]

Well.

She's not inclined to be upset with the owner of the long dark tail, she thinks. But she would rather like to talk to them.

"Could I have paper and a pen?" she asks of the tray.

[pythbox]

It nods a little teapot nod.

A second tray arrives, bearing some paper and a pen.

[what_greater_weapon]

She writes a note, for people with tails that stay by windows.

'Hey. I'm Noelle. I don't actually have anything ground breaking or clever to write, just - I try not to be an asshole. Are you also stuck here?'

She folds it up and leaves it outside of the window, in an easy-to-see place, along with the pen and spare blank paper, and then takes dinner and the book she's currently working on and leaves the library in case the person with a tail would like to have some space after being so rudely found out.

Upon reflection, she is going to go to a very easy to see spot, and will not look upset at all. This is easy, because she's not actually upset. Outside in a comfy spot she goes. Nom. Reading. Nom.

[pythbox]

Time passes.



The second tray comes out to her, carrying note and pen and remaining paper—and a reply. Just a few words, written out in very large letters so that all together they cover nearly an entire page. Despite obvious care, the lines wobble in a few places.

CURSED
NO NAME
109 YEARS
ALONE

FOREST
TOOK YOU
TO HELP

[what_greater_weapon]

Well, this seems to be working. She minds much less that she was snapped up by the forest. Okay, forest. She forgives you.

She gets another sheet of paper and writes.

'By learning magic and beating the curse with it until it stops its shit, or is there another mechanism by which I am helping?'

On the tray it goes, to the tailed person.

[pythbox]

The tray scampers off, and returns after a somewhat shorter time with a new reply, written more hastily with more visible wobbles:

TRUE LOVE
ENDS CURSE
FOR FAIRNESS

FAMILY
3 BROTHERS
ENEMY
CHOSE ME
LEAST LOVABLE
CURSED ME
BEAST-FORM

NOT SO FAIR

[what_greater_weapon]

...

That has some implications about her, doesn't it.

She doesn't mind, she's more focused on fuck this enemy, holy shit, who would even do that. She wants to find this enemy and calmly let them know in no uncertain terms that this is not okay. By stabbing them. Not to torture, just to kill, there's no need to make a mess, just, make this person not exist in the world anymore. Very neat and tidy.

'I will get you out,' she writes. And then because she doesn't want to get into her burning passionate feelings about the subject of getting this poor person out of this fucking castle, she adds, 'I also will not freak out upon seeing you, if you're worried about that.'

[pythbox]

Well.



The tray comes back with no new message. It gives an apologetic little tray-shrug.

[what_greater_weapon]

Okay.

Having space is probably dramatically important to him, with - all of this. And there is a lot of this. She will give him as much space as he needs, and not read too much into the true love portion of the curse reversal. If she can learn magic, she can get him out, and no one needs to fall in love with anyone unless they want to. That sounds like the solution to her.

She finishes figuring out the gist of the language for this book, and then: back to the library. She has a mission. Read read read read.

[pythbox]

There is no more contact from the cursed person that night, and no notes with her breakfast the next morning.

[what_greater_weapon]

She is also fine with this. She skips physical exertions today, and goes straight to language. Read read read read she is running out of easy books she'll move on to trying to figure out magic soon read read.

At lunch time, she considers, and writes a note.

'Let me know if you would like me to stay away from certain parts of the castle so you can have space. I've just been going where I feel like, but it doesn't matter a ton to me. I don't mind moving bedrooms, if you want the wing I'm in.'

[pythbox]

There is no immediate response.

And then, around midafternoon, a tray-creature arrives with a note:

MORE
CASTLE

A few seconds later, there is a very quiet rumbling/grinding noise that comes up through the floor and in through the walls as though the castle has decided to scratch an itch.

[what_greater_weapon]

That is really cool and she wants to explore the shit out of the castle. But he needs his space. So. No exploring the shit out of the castle. Even if it has really cool - whatever that is. She's not sure.

'That is really really cool,' she writes, because she doesn't know what else to write. 'And I'll refrain from exploring everything to give you space.'

[pythbox]

Fairly quickly:

NO

MINE
HIDDEN

[what_greater_weapon]

'I mean, yes, but now that I know there are hidden places in the castle, I am terribly curious and want to know about all of them yesterday. I meant more in the sense that I will not try to find them.'

[pythbox]

No response.

[what_greater_weapon]

That's fine.

Read! Read read read read read augh her voice is starting to get scratchy.

[pythbox]

A tray-creature brings her a fresh pot of tea.

[what_greater_weapon]

Awww. Best tray-creature.

"Thank you," she says to it, patting it gently. She sips tea and considers the books.

She thinks she might need to come at this with a new angle. At least while her throat is protesting about reading this much aloud.

Noelle starts looking for the major concepts in the books - the things the highly technical stuff just assumes the reader knows, the things mentioned constantly. She recalls the mindscape thing, that is clearly something that is important, is there anything like it?

[pythbox]

There are multiple such things!

Besides the place-or-something called the Dream-world, there is the process called channeling (part of spellcasting; dangerous), the four varieties of spell power... Those are particularly difficult because the terminology is so inconsistent. In Callian and Albish they are Heart and Will and Earth and Sky, but in other languages they are sometimes called by unrelated terms, and it's not always clear which corresponds to which, and sometimes specific books use sometimes-clear sometimes-opaque symbols or shorthand.

[what_greater_weapon]

Of course they do. Why is she not surprised.

Okay. Is there a sort of pattern to the types of spell power that she can discern? Or, for that matter, more clarification on the Dream-word?