Welcome to
River’s Cove
Your
wanderings have led you to a secluded little place along a river’s edge. The banks, a mixture of red clay and mud,
bare the markings of a water Dragoness, deep scratches showing where she has
entered and exited the water’s edge.
Looking around, you notice the peacefulness of the place, willow trees
creating a natural shield from the busyness of the world from which you
came. Birds serenade softly from their
perches and a few chipmunks scamper to and fro in an everlasting game of tag
and hide and seek. Surveying the
scenery, you notice some of the bushes are supporting scrolls with a sort of
writing etched upon them. Unable to
resist, you approach the sheaves of paper, eager to decipher the writing
scrawled over them.
Standing so
close to the shrubbery that it’s branches brush your limbs, tickling ever so
slightly, your hands reach out to hold the sheet closest to you. The designs are strange and foreign, and
yet oddly familiar, as though remembered vaguely from a dream. Shaking your head slightly, fighting a fog
of memories, your eyes focus on the symbols and images which now seem to
dance along the page. It is then the
you take note the claw stretched out from underneath the greenery.
Stunned,
you see a rune has been scratched gently into the flesh of your foot; so
tenderly in fact, that you had mistaken it for a lower branch nudging your
flesh in the gentle breeze. The claw
draws back slowly, though not in fear, as the Dragoness makes herself known,
emerging fully from the cool dirt beneath the hedge.
“Greetings, I am River Song.
Your curiosity will be rewarded, friend. The Rune of Inspiration will enable you to
decode my text. Feel free to peruse
the scrolls you find here.” As she
speaks of the parchments, the teal Dragoness gestures to the hedges, now
noticeably planted in the same shape as the rune which has settled like a
soft tattoo upon your hide.
Illustration by
Midnight Dragon (used with permission)