A servant refills the cup, without instruction, without fanfare or flourish, and immediately withdraws to—  No one is there.  Kayla keeps no household staff.  A bittersweet melody picks up Rashana's explanation, matching the tone of her last five words and elaborating on the theme from there.  It's a bell chorus, or a piano, or maybe a distant flute, and it comes from no place.  An image in stark black and white flashes in the window.  It's the shape of a person but gone instantly.  Then nothing.  Quiet.  Peace like firelight warm on the face.  Incense in the air, punctuating the perfume of so many flowers—so many—with slashes of vetiver and myrrh.

Faced with Rashana’s sudden embrace it was all Laila could do to keep her feet. She held a moment, almost unsure how to react, before throwing any sense of decorum to the wind and allowing herself to melt into the all-too-welcome hug. Laila’s hand found its way to Rashana’s back and settled in between her shoulder blades, drawing soft circles with her fingertips. She leaned in close and earnestly whispered “I’m here; I promise you I’m here” almost as much for her own sake as the other woman’s nerves.

Her eyes were shining when they parted, and even after she had blinked them clear, head turned slightly to one side of the sake of her blushes, they still seemed so much brighter. More alive. The smile she offered Alavatter in the aftermath (hadn’t there been someone else too?) felt almost apologetic. No similar show of affection was forthcoming however.

“I hesitate to say how long we’ve been apart. The Garden has been my home for...” a quick glance to Kayla as if to confirm her thoughts “...certainly something like that, but time moves strangely in the Night. How long it took me to find my way here, I really don’t know. I couldn't begin to guess”

Laila pursed her lips a moment, considering something, then seemed to think better of it. “Please have a seat, both of you, and I’ll try my best to explain things.” She gestured to the table. “Tea? I assure you it's quite excellent”
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 12:34, Thu 05 Nov 2020.

The blonde was tense, Laila could definitely feel that much, as the embrace settled form unexpected into a gentle moment. Laila's whisper seemed to sooth some of it, and tighten other hints of tension, questions doubtless swirling in the blonde's head. But that was enough.

Laila seemed brighter, after, that was clear enough to her. "You certainly seem to have  been through a lot more than we have. Things were... relatively smooth, once we parted ways... I suppose we owe that to you..." There was some very real guilt behind her words, her head lowering slightly. The offer of tea drew her eye back to the table, and back to Kayla al-Saif. She nodded gently, and moved at the invitation from Laila, taking up a seat smoothly, hand brushing down over her sturdy skirt.

"Ahem... I will have some, thank you. I am Rashana." She introduced herself with lowering of her head to the other woman present.

Laila drew in Madam al-Saif’s attention with a tilt of her head, looking to supplement that introduction. She spoke with the familiarity of one well-versed in such social protocol. “Rashana is a dear friend of mine and quite possibly the finest engineer and artisan in all the realms. She and I forged Dawnbringer together” - a brush of her sword’s hilt - “and I count myself blessed to have such a thing at my side. To have someone like her at my side again.”

“But Shana, please” she gently chided, keen to buoy up her companion. “Whatever you’ve achieved in the Nexus, I had no part in it. I gave our people a moment of hope, yes, but you and the others have had to reassure and comfort them anew with each passing day. If anything I am indebted to all of you for carrying my share of that responsibility.” Laila leaned in a little closer and her voice gave way to absolute sincerity. “Please remember that what happened was my choice and the consequences mine alone to bear. We’ve both of us fought our own battles, and that I have a few more scars to show for mine makes your victories no less worthy. Be glad that I am here, not aggrieved that some small piece of me is not; be proud of yourself like I am proud of you.”

Point made, and one last meaningful look shared with Rashana, she smoothly moved on to the other inheritor with a lazy wave of her hand.

“As for Alavatter, he is a man of learning and wisdom. Though we spent little time together before our parting, I always welcomed his council and found his knowledge and guidance invaluable. I’m sure his mind has served our people well in this unfamiliar new world, for there is no-one I would sooner trust to unravel its mysteries and problems. I think he might have much to offer you here in the Garden.”

The work of introductions done, her smile and easy warmth held a moment before giving way to an expression altogether more pensive. A look passed between Laila and their host that carried something, some silent conversation, before she nodded, licked her lips and turned to her friends. Her arm drifted over to hold her left side. “So… to more serious matters: the Roads and my journey here.”

“When I chose to stay and hold the line I did so hoping more than just to play the martyr. Rashana had proven that thing could be hurt, and that was enough to assure me such a stand didn’t have to end in death. It was a stupid thing to tell myself – arrogance of the worst kind – but in that moment I let myself believe it: I could do what seemed impossible and save everyone, even me. The people would truly see that we were Anaya’s heirs, and they would cause to hope again.” She laughed but it was a bitter hollow thing. “And I called Joshua a fool...”

“We were far from equals, myself and the beast. Perhaps on more favourable ground we might have matched it had we all stood together, but we were in the Night and I was the one who stood alone while swarmed by its smaller kin. I held for … not long is all I can say. Minutes perhaps. Even then it felt like I was being toyed with rather than truly tested. Like my efforts were an amusement and nothing more, to be ended as soon as it grew tired of the show.” Laila brought her hand up to her left shoulder and lightly patted the remains of her arm. “This could have been my head had it wished it. It broke my guard, tore my arm from me, and just … left me there like I was nothing. And I don’t know why. It would have been so easy to kill me, and yet it didn’t.”

“I sealed my wounds as best I could, and for a time I stayed there at the gate. I expected something from the Night would scent my blood and come to finish me, but there was only the dark and the quiet. It was almost peaceful.” She gave Rashana an apologetic look, as if she knew better than to say what came to mind yet could not help herself. “After a while I did try the gate, if only to be sure. I knew there would be no answer, but …”

Laila’s voice trailed off into a sigh. It was wearing on her, picking at her scars. That these things needed to be voiced, to be aired so they might better heal, made the process no easier. All that brilliant excitement of reunion was running thin and in its absence she seemed much diminished. “In the end I chose to walk the Roads. I had been given a chance at life, and even if that meant travelling blind and helpless it was still the only choice worth making. I wanted to live and to see you all again. That was enough to keep me going through the pain and the exhaustion and the sheer loneliness of it all. I couldn’t give up knowing that if I had just pushed myself a little further I might have found a way home and justified every last agony.”

“It was sheer luck that I found the Garden, and even more so that they found me near-dead on the path. Kayla and her people worked miracles to see me well, and as if I did not have enough to thank them for, now they have brought us together too.” Laila laughed again, honestly this time, and shook her head in what could only have been disbelief. “After all that, to have the pieces fall back together so easily ... just unbelieveable.”

As Laila stepped in to fill in the muted introduction she'd given herself, Rashana found herself rather on the spot, her cheeks  warming a little at Laila's glowing acknowledgement of her talents. She actually looked slightly away, at least until Laila addressed her directly. Her head turned and her eyes lifted to the dark-haired inheritor, looking perhaps a little stunned by the diminutive at play.

As she leaned in and went on a bit further, the maker's lips pressed together a bit more thinly and shifted into a slight smile, before her eyes lowered to her tea, and she pulled the cup closer, in both hands, to take a drink and sample it. Quietly, a breath left her lips, relaxing a small knot of tension in her stomach. Laila went on to introduce Alavatter, then to begin to talk about what she'd experienced.

Rashana turned her attention back to Laila as her story started, a soft expression on her face as she listened and digested the tale quietly. She felt her throat tighten, though, when Laila brought up the gate, and her eyes lowered again, turned slightly away as that twist in her gut returned. Her mouth parted slightly, then closed, as she pulled her lower lip in with a restless nip of her teeth. Laila continued, and she looked back to her, bringing her tea up for a drink - and a quick, subtle brush of the edge of her eye with a finger.

"...I'm... just glad you made it, Laila." She said, after a moment of quiet, leaning back in her seat with a quiet sigh, arms folding across her stomach and her hands taking hold of the opposite elbows lightly. Not quite the guarded look of crossed arms, it was a softer posture, though not a fully relaxed one. Her eyes moved to their thus-far quiet host.

"As am I," replied Laila fondly. She quirked her head towards the pair. "But enough about me: why is it that you are here?"

Alvatter, for his part, had stood in shocked silence for a long moment as his mind attempted to grapple with the realities of what he was witnessing. Before his Laila, one of the few Inheritors to have survived the collapse of their world but seemingly lost to the Night Road or the web of realms it connected to. She had aged, grown more mature, but more importantly she lived. As she spoke he regained some composure over himself and searched her with his divine powers, seeking out magic that might prove some fell illusion or blighted influencing of the mind and percepts. When he found none a weight he didn't know he carried lifted from his shoulders.

It was then that she introduced him and he blushed, a hand reflexively going to the back of his slightly too long hair. He looked down to avoid glancing into the woman's eyes.

"You flatter me. I am but one of many learned men that survived the collapse of our world but yes should you need of my services I am fully prepared and willing to assist however I may."

He then moved into the area proper, responding to Laila's question.

"We were investigating the many gateways of the Nexus. It was only be chance, or perhaps Fate, that we came upon the Garden first. We have a food situation you see. Nothing immediately pressing but without a stable food supply the people of the Nexus will be taxed."
This message was last edited by the player at 04:03, Mon 09 Nov 2020.

Kayla al-Saif smiles a little, busying herself making tea while the new arrivals talk with Laila. She returns and sets cups on the table before sitting back down. "So you are other travelers of the Roads Between Spaces, then? Interesting. It has been...many years since we saw one, much less a whole group of you." She shakes her head, expression bemused.

"Still, if you are friends of Layla's, then I think you friends of mine - she has been most kind helping us with the ward-lanterns. You say you need food, would you like something to eat? I can offer you fruit." Her tone is sardonic as she says this.

  Somewhere that is anywhere in the hedge maze outside the houses, La stands—unsteadily—at the edge of safety.  The last lantern lit.  She contemplates it for a time, and puts a little effort into coming up with the best way to take it down and carry it, but turns away from the project ultimately having done little but scurry aroundhasn't moved an inchand look at things.  The lantern is in her hand all the same, shining on just fine as she starts out into the twilight beyond.

  "Fishmonger, fishmonger, sell me your catch," she whispers rounding a corner some minutes later.  She hasn't seen movement that wasn't the breeze since she left the fortified spaces behind, and lately, the juice has been wringing itself out of every berry she passes.  The children's song is a call-and-response one.  She peeks down every path she doesn't take, at least a little bit.  "I've nothing to sell.  The seas are all dry~"

"Of a sort, it would seem." Rashana answered Kayla's assessment. "Travelers only insomuch as a disaster befell our world and, before that, the Goddess who watched over it. I, Layla, Alvatter, and several others were, as best as can be surmised, touched with shades of her power as she faded away, a last gift, and it was we who rallied out people to escape. We lost several on the road, Layla among them, when she held the gate out we had discovered. We have come across a strange, empty-seeming realm with a great deal of construction, including an array of gateways that seem to open other portals - this was the first we had investigated in the hopes of solutions to problems that linger less powerfully than immediate safety." She elaborated, looking to Layla, perhaps filling her in on what she'd missed - or rather, hadn't missed, really.

There was a brief pause, and then a nod, as she actually shifted from exposition to answering... "But yes, fruit sounds good to me... Thank you."

Kayla busies herself in the kitchen, and brings out a tray of fruits - everything from pomegranate and mango to more familiar fruits like apples, and to some truly exotic things - spiny melons filled with seeds in thick goop, crimson cruits with creamy interiors, and star-shaped citrus slices.

"Here, my home is your home," the mayor says, setting the tray down and taking her seat again. "Laila's help against the Lampkeeper has been invaluable. He has not taken anyone from the settlement, since her arrival, and only some few who were out in the forest. The lanterns keep him at bay again, as long as they remain in the pattern."

She sips her tea and sighs. "Of course we remain under siege. We need meat from the forest, game, to stay healthy. But that is his domain. Some of our foragers don't return, from any given trip out."

Meanwhile, in a darker place, La takes the ward-lantern and carries it out into the gathering night...

She isn't sure how long she's been walking through the floral trees, when she begins the children's song. But she hears the reply. It isn't one she's familiar with, but it fits the rhythm of the song.

"Then sell me your child, fisher-man, and I will bring the fish back." The voice is a smooth baritone, rich and resonant and filled with something that lurks beneath the surface like a sharp-toothed fish beneath ocean waves. "He did, you know. Brought his boy down to the water's edge, and gave him to the god of the sea. And the god of the sea brought the fish back to that part of the ocean."

The source of the voice steps out of the shadows beneath the trees. He's a tall man, with features fine enough as to look a little eerie, and skin so pale it seems more like a ceramic than healthy flesh. In one hand he holds a delicate-looking hooked knife, a karambit. The blade gleams like molten silver and moonlight pressed into a solid form. In the other, an old fashioned lamp, where an emerald flame burns too steady atop a reservoir of something that does not smell like oil. More like blood.

"Good evening, young lady," the Lampkeeper says. His smile is perfectly unreadable, alien, an imitation of a thing one does not understand. "It's a lovely night for a walk. Don't you think?"

Alvatter quirks his head to the side somewhat, looking to Kayla.

"Under siege you say?"

"What is it that this Lampkeeper is after within the settlement? And he is abducting people. Whatever for?"

He had a sneaking suspicion as to what the answer would be but he decided it best to ask rather than assume.

"Oh, nobody really knows for sure," Kayla says easily. "Just know that they don't come back, and sometimes someone sees him taking them with him into the forest. Always from a distance. And nobody finds anything of them, not even a lock of hair or a shed garment, ever again." She sips tea. "It's happening more, the past few years, then it used to. But it's always happened."

Her tone is almost eerily casual. As though she's describing a storm more than a thinking, dangerous being. Certainly something to be saddened and upset by, but there's no real trace of anger in her voice, and no sense of conflict.

Laila couldn’t wholly mask her grimace. Even being more familiar with the circumstances in which the Garden found itself, with how its people had adjusted, she was still far from jaded towards that vague yet ever-present threat. It ate at her in a manner her hosts had clearly long since put behind them.

“I’ve walked much of the borderline while working to strengthen the wards, but thus far I’m yet to see any sign of him. Whether that's good luck or him having some awareness of my power ...” Laila tailed off, answering her own question with a shrug. “I had been considering heading off the path to seek him out alone, but after what happened the last time I tried something like that it seemed a risk too far. Not without an actual plan.”

Alvatter listened to both Kayla and Laila before retrieving a small book and reservoir pen from his robes. For those curious as to its nature the book was bound in what appeared to be polished wood and its binding nothing more than simple loops of twine, a classic sign of the mass produced journals carried by many of the Archivists.

Lampkeeper

Entity of unknown nature that is currently inhabiting the Walled Garden, possible native entity. Known for abductions which leave no material evidence behind. May also have theurgic detection capabilities. Currently is being repulsed by warded lanterns. Further investigation needed.

He scrutinized his notes some before speaking again.

"If you'll humor a few more questions could you describe to me this Lampkeeper. You mentioned that some have seen them at a distance but how clearly have they seen then and are they confident there is only one of these Lampkeepers rather than a group or species of them. For that matter why do they have the name Lampkeeper."
This message was last edited by the player at 04:19, Tue 17 Nov 2020.

  If he is ceramic, she is a porcelain doll, stark white and idealized as she hadn't been, once.  But her valley is canny in the extreme, and her presence meets his Menace with Invitation.  She may be a marionette, even, with the way she freezes mid-stride at the first hint of his voice, in a position that surely can't be stably balanced.  She pivots as she places her foot back down, until she faces the visitor, respectfully attentive.  Typical of her.  Atypical: she meets his eyes with an unabashed smile, the muted sort you see when the pleasant emotions are a choice.

  "It's always night here, even in the daytime.  And it's always lovely."  But she takes a few steps closer and holds a hand up, palm down and relaxed as though she expects him to take it.  In her other, the lantern's golden flame jumps erratically.  "Come, appreciate it with me before the nightmare begins.  Show me the shore and the fish, so that I understand the moon.  You're part of it all; you're what I saw peeking through the gaps.  I need to learn that trick so I never lose track.  Come."
This message was last edited by the player at 05:48, Mon 16 Nov 2020.

"He's a pale man, very pale. Seems to be the same - we've never seen him in two places at once." Kayla's voice is easy. "As for the other, well, he carries a lamp. Old thing, made of silver, but it burns with a green flame. We call him other things, but Lampkeeper is the main one, because that lamp seems important to him - we've never seen him without it. No one has."

The Lampkeeper take's La's hand (where did the knife go? He didn't sheathe it, but it's not there now) and smiles at her. His touch is deathly cold, like a corpse, or snow, or wind. "Let us walk, then," he says, and takes a step off of the marked path, into the trees.

"It's an old story, the fisherman and the sea god," he says. "Very old indeed, and much lost in the retelling. But the shape of it is true. Offer enough, and one receives in trade. But it always has a cost..." His voice is melancholy, now, laced through with bittersweet sorrow.

"So tell me," he says, "what will you offer? What toll do you have, that I should tell you the secrets of the forest? I know many things and more, that I have learned over this long life. But there's nothing in this world or the next that comes without a price."

The Lampkeeper gently tugs her onward, through the blooming trees. The only light is the lamp he carries, and the lantern that she does. The air smells richly of jasmine and cherry, sandalwood incense and floral perfume.

"How very odd." he said, all the while amending his notes on the Lampkeeper.

Appears as a pale-skinned humanoid male. Believed to a singular entity. Carries a silver lantern that burns with an unnatural green hue, likely related in some fashion to its deeper nature.

He turned to look at the Laila then.

"When you created these lanterns did you know that they would repel the Lampkeeper or was an it an unintended consequence?"

It would be clear to all assembled that Alvatter would continue to ask questions until he either exhausted the groups patience or someone interjected with more pressing matters.

  "I come from further than that," La replies by way of reassurance and does not immediately proffer an answer. She seems content for the time being to follow, though her instruction had been for him to, and to relish the beauty all around them. Well, to relish something. She actually pays little enough attention to the sensory delights, from all appearances.

  Eventually though, a response is ready. "The fisherman cannot become the god of the sea. The sea has what he needs, so he cannot be its master. He will always pay what he takes. I think I am the shore the fisherman stands on when he begs, and all the land behind it. Do you know what that's like, to feel so vast? I'm still not sure I do; I don't have a single word for it. Now, let's be serious."

  Nothing about her increasingly dreamy smile or the overt friendliness in her voice changes to clarify what being serious could mean, aside from the subject matter. "You've chosen the destination and the reward. And I am flattered, but I will still need an invoice. And an estimate for the rest. And throw away your first, because it won't be honest enough, and then you're the fisherman's wife."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:54, Tue 17 Nov 2020.

“Oh, I did not create the lanterns,” Laila replied with a light shake of the head. “The practice was already well-established when I arrived here, but the magic bound to them had long been waning. I would not like to guess how long it might have been until they proved no defence at all against the Lampkeeper.”

“After spending some time with Zara – she crafts the lanterns – it was not difficult to replicate that same power with my own and to shed a piece of myself into each new ward we made together. The difference was dramatic to say the least, like the sun and a dying candle.“ She chuckled warmly, “Not that I mean to brag of course; the honest truth.”
This message was last edited by the player at 00:16, Wed 18 Nov 2020.

"You remind me of her, a little, a touch," the Lampkeeper says to La, his tone meditative. "You ask an invoice? Very well. A price for each question you want an answer to, a sacrifice. Life and love and laughter, all the things that she needs. Not all of it, no, just a touch...and I will answer your question honestly and completely. I have no intention to take more, or to be deceptive with my answers; that is beneath such as you and I. Does that sound fair, O Goddess of the Land?"

  "Fair is not the measuring-spoon that rattles in the drawer," La replies in a singsong. She slips her hand free from the Lampkeeper's, leaving behind a lavender mushroom the size of her thumb. The note tied around it with red string says "Eat me." She has found a rosebush in a trice, and when the roses here prove too pleasant to have thorns, she plucks a single large petal instead. "You should have asked if it's safe."

  She draws the edge of the petal down the center of her left hand, along the seventy-ninth meridian and its deep flows of wood chi, and it bites deep as any knife: even that one. The first drops to emerge were intensely red, but the color of the roses rather than of blood. But once the residue is flushed away, what ruins out in sheets is a synesthetic riot of texture and sound, flavor and direction. It quickly becomes difficult to hear anything but the wordless exclamations, always from just behind, that splash up every time a drop of worry strikes the undergrowth.

  "It isn't. But you offered without asking. The girl laughs with widdershins eyes and extends her kaleidoscope voice, and the leaves in the trees around them echo her words in his voice and vice versa. La raises her bloody hand, steps in close, and flattens it against the center of his chest. "I accept. I will sacrifice for answers. But for this? For more than you thought to ask? You must serve."

I'm taking a lot of license with the scenery because La is too real to properly exist, in this realm. But also because none to all of it might not be happening. Sometimes apotheosis is confusing.

Looks like she got a very clear price, and only raised from there. Miracle for The Harlot's Trade.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:01, Wed 18 Nov 2020.

Rashana had curiosities about this Lampkeeper, but the conversation turned to the subject, and, as a matter of practice, she remained quiet to allow an exchange that she could listen to and think on - if she could get her mind off of what Laila had said... implying that she had been the only one to deal with the consequences was still a knot in the fringes of the maker's mind.

Such was driven out of her focus when Kayla spoke, and the unsettling normalcy of the threat they dealt with registered for Rashana. Still, Alvatter seemed intent on gathering information, and she was as curious as he, so his questions didn't seem to trouble her.

As Laila mentioned shedding a bit of herself into the lamps, there was a curious glance from Rashana. "Maybe I could help improve the effect as well, given my talents. Though, perhaps the best solution would be a more permanent one, a means of removing the threat of the Lampkeeper entirely. Or, perhaps, containing it? Has anyone ever tried to confront the Lampkeeper?"