Here's something you don't see every day....
It's an Elf. In fact, you couldn't get a more Elfly Elf if the fellow came marching in with fifty other Elves, a cartful of Waybread and a banner with a big tree on it. Full armor, bow across the back, robelike cloaks in soft silvery grey...even the sort of hair that left one wondering where a soldier like him found the time to keep it up. Very...decorative.
Or he would be, if his clothes weren't reduced to patched and mended rags, still bearing faded stains in a few places--especially around the sewn-up gash in the back of his cloak. He is clean, and relatively well tended-to, but his eyes are sunken, and have a feverish gleam in them. He's skittish, glancing quickly at every movement and given to sudden freezing, like a stag lost in a condo development.
It takes him a little to read the sign--not because of illiteracy, but because he keeps expecting it to fade like an object in a dream. When he finally speaks, it is slow, his voice soft and almost toneless, like one would expect from a sleepwalker.
"What would you do if you spent your whole life believing in a certain afterlife...and then ended up somewhere else after you died?"
Or he would be, if his clothes weren't reduced to patched and mended rags, still bearing faded stains in a few places--especially around the sewn-up gash in the back of his cloak. He is clean, and relatively well tended-to, but his eyes are sunken, and have a feverish gleam in them. He's skittish, glancing quickly at every movement and given to sudden freezing, like a stag lost in a condo development.
It takes him a little to read the sign--not because of illiteracy, but because he keeps expecting it to fade like an object in a dream. When he finally speaks, it is slow, his voice soft and almost toneless, like one would expect from a sleepwalker.
"What would you do if you spent your whole life believing in a certain afterlife...and then ended up somewhere else after you died?"