"Hey, is it done? What'd it want?" Gish asked as the creature turned and started floating away, seemingly removing itself from the men's minds. They didn't look any different on the outside, but what if they had tentacles in their heads now? Her mother had told her stories about things that could do that, wrapping their tentacles round people's thoughts and never letting them go, dragging them around by the brain. Then she realized that was stupid, because if it could do that it would have done it when it had been in her brain and she would trust the tentacles. The paradoxical fact was that tentacles were still the absolute number two thing she distrusted in the entire world, and that her still feeling this way meant the tentacles before her were probably trustworthy. It made her head hurt.

Luckily she didn't have to think about it for long, because the tentacles uncovered something else to occupy her thoughts. A small creature, only a little bigger than her, grabbed at the covering the Leech Witch Tentacles thing had pulled off of it with the sort of desperate panic that she was intimately familiar with. She grabbed at the brim of her hat in sympathy, pulling it even more snugly around her head, and silently rooted for the Pink Deer Rabbit thing. It wrenched itself free of the tentacles and ran off recklessly into the dark, then managed to brain itself on a rock. She opened her mouth to say something, but then her thoughts were interrupted again.

The absolute number one thing she distrusted in the entire world walked into the circle of firelight and banged her staff. 

Look at that hat! Who did she think she was fooling!? 

More than any information about tentacles her mother had told her about witches, and that was only compounded by the stories she'd heard in her nighttime lurkings in the nearby village. Witches were horrible creatures that stole men's souls and women's breath. They ate children and conspired with all kinds of devils. They flew around naked in the form of beautiful woman and everywhere their shadow touched was rendered barren. Her mother had been very particular not to go out far into the swamp, because according to her they shared it with a particularly horrible witch by the name of...

[color=598527]"Why hello there! What an interesting party you are. Might I humbly request to join your gathering? You have the pleasure of meeting Rose..."[/color]

Gish felt her stomach drop out and froze like a stone, while at the same time a nagging little voice of disbelief was born in her head. There was no way. There was no way that this was the woman whose cackling form occasionally still haunted her nightmares. She had never seen the trickster witch herself. Her mother had kept her close at hand throughout until the day when the witch had quit the swamp for greener pastures, and she'd had no desire to test her luck before then. In addition the witch had never come to them because, according to her mother, they were friends to the gods of the swamp and those gods would whip up seven shades of hell on the witch if she tried to trespass on their land. The woman before her looked the part from the stories, though. Then again the stories only mention that she was extremely beautiful. Then [i]again[/i] this woman was so beautiful Gish actually felt a bit of anger welling up amid the rising tide of sheer terror.

Rose continued speaking. Rose Red. A little joke. A Mage. Gish desperately wanted to believe that. She grasped at any reason she could that her mother and all the parents of the village had made it all up, because what could she do if it was true? If the woman was the Trickster Witch that had supposedly disappeared from the swamp some time ago she would be hexed if she tried to warn the others. Her eyes shifted to the knight. That was it! Knights fought witches. That had ways to tell, surely. If the knight thought she was a witch, that would be that! If he didn't, that meant she probably wasn't a witch. That confrontation would decide it.

If she turned out to be a witch Gish did not want to be around for whatever happened when that was revealed. She looked for a good excuse to get out of the circle of light, and heard the groans of the Pink Deer Rabbit thing. "I'm, uh, I'm gonna go see if that person is okay. Won't be long, I'll be back in just a little. I, uh, I mean, we're the same size so maybe they won't run away if I go up to them? Yeah, that's right. Right." she said, trying and failing to keep the nerves out of her voice, before moving with forced calm toward the slightly obscured Pink Deer Rabbit thing.

It was scrambling around looking for something, and she felt her foot knocked against something in her path that clattered a small ways forward. She reached down and took the small blade in her hand, then flipped it around and extended it to him hilt first. Normally she wouldn't do something like that, but she was no fighter and figured that maybe they should be armed. "Hi." She said. She'd never really introduced herself before and wavered awkwardly. "I'm, well, call me Gish." Something else, something else, people said other things after introducing themselves. She glanced back at the witch. This had to be normal. "I like your cloak." she blurted out.