[quote]“Ah, excuse me Mayor Toll. I was meaning to ask which rooms did you assign us to. I have two other women with me who’d like to act as roommates-goodness you look like you’ve seen a ghost!” Alice said, titling her head and taking in the man’s expression. “Would you like a glass of water dear? Or perhaps I can lend you an ear? It sounds like you have something you’d like to scream aloud.”[/quote]

The mayor blinked dazedly at Alice, and his lower lip trembled despite his valiant attempts to remain proper and vigilant. [b]"There are no assigned rooms, Miss,"[/b] he said by way of distracting his thoughts. [b]"Any of the upstairs rooms are available to you for the night's stay, please do choose whichever of them seems most appealing . . ."[/b] His voice trailed off to a squeak, and while Alice watched, despair glimmered in his small eyes.

[b]"My daughter, Sewena."[/b] The name triggered a desperate passion in the mayor, who finally unclasped his hands from behind his back and flung them with his words. [b]"I should have been a better father! I ignored her most of her life, always working, always locked in with my letters, barely saw her face. She resents me. She told me so, the day before she . . . when I told her I didn't approve of her boyfriend, Jory's his name."[/b] His expression flashed with anger.

[b]"We've pounded on Jory's door -- he lives at the end, in the house with the fox-statue out front,"[/b] he pointed down the dirt road, [b]"but there's no response and the door's locked, which is quite unusual for this town. No one has seen a hair of him since Sewena didn't come back from the woods. I fear he [i]has[/i] her! My daughter's missing and in trouble and she [i]hates[/i] me and I'm a useless old man."[/b]

The prim and proper middle-aged mayor crumbled into tears, then, and sank down to sit on the floor of the porch. He could do what that glass of water.

Once he'd caught his breath again, he had one other thing to say: [b]"I was only told secondhand how she didn't come home. Miss Tregonning knows more than I do. She rents a room to Sewena, next door."[/b]

[hr][quote]Thus [Jacky] followed a couple of the others towards the dining hall and sat down at a small table at the corner of the room, not ordering anything.  Just staring at the wall, wondering what the hell he was doing with his life.[/quote]

The dining hall was beginning to warm with people and chatter and a fire crackling in the hearth, but Rook remained as sullen and forbidding as the moment he had joined this little inexperienced troupe. There was one who came in, though, who stood out from the others.

Rook ate quietly, studying the room for a few minutes. Eventually he got up and piled a new plate with food, filled a cup with water, and then -- after traversing the room -- uncerimoniously banged the plate and the cup down in front of Jacky.

He gave Jacky a glare, threatening him to refuse the food, before he sat down in the chair opposite Jacky and folded his arms to watch and make sure Jacky ate.

[b]"Why are you here?"[/b] he demanded in a quiet, gruff voice, after a long while of only glaring. The question, though, was asked in all sincerity: there was no implication that Jacky should be anywhere [i]but[/i] here, only that it was unclear what Jacky himself thought of it.

[hr][quote]Stopping in front of the wagon, Uwen smiled and waved again at the wagon man! "Hello again! I told ya I was good at walking."[/quote]

Breok lifted his head from speaking with Jenna to see the green ogre lumbering toward them with a grin and a bag of cookies, and he raised his bushy red eyebrows at the sight.

[b]"Yes you did,"[/b] Breok replied with a mystified grin. [b]"Ha! Yes you did. Well, I didn't know 'f you'd make it but ya did, and no worse fer wear. Next time, though, we'll have a bigger wagon, yeah?"[/b]

[hr][quote]Rhea skirted around Uwen before stopping in front of the giant, smiling playfully, "As I made my way here, I could overhear the driver mentioning that Mister Kenver disappeared behind that boulder there," she pointed to the large rock, being sure to grab Uwen's attention, "What do you say, my size-advantaged friend, do you think that you could move it so that we can investigate any possible clues over there? If you do that... I'll have a special treat just for Y.O.U.~"[/quote]

Both Mayor Toll and Breok the wagon-driver looked from Rhea to Uwen, curious about this simple request and hopeful for what it might divulge. A few curtains moved in the windows of locked-up homes.

Under the assumption that Uwen would accept the cryptic promise, the following would transpire:

The woods were full of pine trees, fragrant and sappy, and hard with rocks and boulders between them. The boulder in question came up to about Uwen's waist -- to an average sized man, it would still only come up to chest height -- but was wide and cumbersome to wield. Uwen, as strong as he was, would certainly find a way to take the boulder out of the way of the investigation.

The soft dent in the earth where the boulder had been was crawling with beetles and larvae and ants, but there wasn't anything particularly fascinating about it. There was now a very good view, however, of the footprints and scuff marks that had been made by several different pairs of shoes and a couple of bare feet, marked in the shallow dirt. After Kenvar had gone missing, a few of the villagers had walked around the boulder trying to find him; they had obliterated any evidence that might have been left there. There wasn't even a hair nor a thread of cloth here left of Kenvar.

After considerable examination, however, one might discover a very different footprint left in the loose dirt at the far side of the clearing: it looked like an enormous pawprint, perhaps that of a very large cat, pointed toward the deep of the forest.

[hr][@TheWindel][@NorthernGR][@Gareth][@KoL]