[hr]The silt of time sifted into the bellows of the old woman’s evident grumble, as the rapping yielded no answers, only to be intermittently overshadowed by the distant human howl. 

The crone diligently repeated the process, door to door, hoping to solicit, to someone, her veiled dessert of dreams, curtained by an unkempt but flashy embroidery. The frayed tapestry permeated with a few sporadic holes, but predominantly demonstrated sewn foregrounds of stitched and sliced children blandly embossed within the abdomens of colossal, salivating adults. The milieu of its hemmed backdrop exhibited a vibrant garden of lilacs, carnations, poppies, and marigolds, suggesting the quilted panoramas were depicting a coerced but enjoyable picnic. 

Eventually, her incessant knocks yielded a riposte. 

Markus and the disgusted Egil, together, trotted closer to the oblivious supplier, observing her slighted scowl tumble into a sly sneer as the soft swing of three hinges fully interred inward.

[color=ed145b]“Yes, yes, open up to Grandmother Morgantha. Jarov…”[/color] The monotony of a trawled echo lingered. [color=ed145b]“I am here for Lucian.”[/color]

Easily, a scuffle with a crying child was soon gleaned. After a few more moments, a man produced a seven year old to the patient peddler.

“Papa, please don’t.” The son pleaded. “I don’t want to go to Bonegrinder.”

The father’s face reluctantly shifted his hooked gaze between his own flesh and blood and the covered wares on the broker’s tumbril. Eventually, an entranced mother seemingly joined the addictive conversation, forcefully pushing the youth towards the haggard hawker. 

[color=f6989d]“You must. Our family needs you.”[/color] The less aged female offered, her lips dripping with familial hemlock.

With that gesture and bid, the older vendor generated two pastries from beneath the artistic but tattered shroud. With a hurried exchange, the boy screeched as arthritic hands shoved him into a pristine sack filled partly with rose petals, crickets and sand, externally clean, oddly, which contrasted against the kidnapper’s messy belongings.

[color=ed145b]“Quiet.”[/color] She growled, tethering the floppy bag onto a lower rack within the wagon’s underside. After the satchel became motionless, the murky merchant belted her contractual sales pitch before pushing once again her wain, along cobbled stones, ever nearer to the mount of George and its handler.

[color=ed145b]“Thank you, Nalkainen.”[/color] She ignored the doll and the puppeteer, whilst thundering over her shoulder anon, [color=ed145b]“I can return as early as next week for your daughter. As long as she can laugh for me. That is, if you are still hungry.” [/color]

The next juicy pause was deliberate, dodging tendrils of webbing.

[color=ed145b]“Just heed the hammering on your steps, of course.”[/color][hr]
>Anala casts Web on Morgantha. Morgantha makes her save.