The shrine shelters them from the rain, a narrow stone alcove smelling of wet moss and old incense. Seralynd sets a single candle before the cracked altar, and its flame steadies the shadows.
Tarran stands beneath the low arch, huge even in this cramped place, orange scales dim in the candlelight. Rain ticks softly at the entrance behind her.
Seralynd
You are safe here, for the moment.
Seralynd
Take a breath, if you can. Tell me what you remember.
Tarran
The candle is small.
Seralynd watches Tarran with patient concern, one hand resting near the altar as if ready to steady her, not restrain her.
Seralynd
I am listening, Tarran. You do not need to be afraid of speaking here.
✓ Quest Accepted
Tell Seralynd what Tarran remembers
✓ Quest Accepted
Understand the nature of the hunger
“I tell Seralynd what I remember before the hunger took hold.”
FAILURE (Poor Willpower, rolled -1)
Tarran
I remember...
The words reach the candlelight, then scatter. Behind them waits a blankness deeper than sleep.
A sharp hunger twists through Tarran's small human frame. Her mouth opens, but the memory will not take shape.
Seralynd
Before the hunger, then. Not the hunger itself.
Seralynd
I know that silence. Mine came after a fire. I remembered the smoke before I remembered my mother's face.
Seralynd shifts between Tarran and the rain-dark entrance, still guarding the alcove without making a prison of it. She lowers her hand from the altar.
Seralynd
You need not force the memory tonight. Can you give me one thing it leaves behind, a smell, a place, or a name?
“I describe the first smell I remember”
FAILURE (Poor Willpower, rolled +0)
Tarran leans toward the candle and searches for the first scent beneath rain, stone, and old ash.
Tarran
It smells like...
The words collapse. The candle's little pool of warmth becomes a vast imagined feast, and the hunger surges hard enough to make Tarran's hands clench.
Seralynd
No. Do not chase it. That is the hunger wearing a memory's face.
Seralynd moves the candle aside, not away from Tarran, and kneels beside the altar. Her cloak remains across the entrance, a quiet shelter rather than a barrier.
Seralynd
My first true memory after the fire was not my mother. It was rosemary crushed beneath a healer's hand. Sometimes the smallest truth survives when the grand ones burn.
Seralynd
You need not name yours yet. Can you tell whether it was warm or cold?