#Lore24 – Entry #263 – Fantasy Month III #20 – Another Horrible City
As Told by Kazumi, Druid of the Circle of Claw and Fang
“This one doesn’t like cities, never has, and Arcavarlon is no different. Too many people, too little reverence for nature, too much distraction… Even the air coming in from the Great Canoma Bay does little to ease this one’s nerves in a place like that. It was all this one could do to make herself go within its walls…so little in the ways of trees around, only a few small parks, nothing for miles around! Terrible!
This one did not care what the others had been tasked to do; she was there to hunt those responsible for harming her forest first and foremost. She knows not the details of the deal, only that we were to aid one of the influential persons in Arcavarlon with some task that could only come from the corruption born of the cities. Has this one mentioned she doesn’t like cities? You are aware of how sensitive a kerryn’s sense of smell is, yes? This one’s is much stronger than that, you see, and this one struggles to ignore everything she doesn’t need to in large places like Arcavarlon. Think of it like when a sudden flash blinds you, of when your senses are vastly overwhelmed and overpowered. Yes, this one could learn to deal with it, but that means spending time in cities, and that is something this one never wished to do.
Once we had settled in at one of the inns, word was sent to arrange to meet the person in question, but that wouldn’t be until later. This one had time to explore, try to make some sense of the chaos that is Arcavarlon. She would spend much time in the shape of a regular cat, listening, watching, learning paths and routes through the mess, finding the pockets of nature she could in the parks, pondering why nature hadn’t reclaimed the abominable city by scouring it from the land through great storms or ice from the northern reaches of the sea. This one saw many things while she watched, some good, some bad, many people just trying to survive. This one may speak of dire matters and affronts to nature, but not all are capable of surviving as this one does amongst the druids. There have been many debates in this one’s time about such matters in the circles, but this one wishes not to bring them up now.
This one would watch and wait while the others visited the temples to their gods in the time we had before we would meet with the one Lady Jade had sent us to assist. This one reveres the spirits of the land above all, though this one admits to being curious of the nature of the lost kerryn mother goddess. This one has had opportunity to speak with some of the nomadic kerryn clans that roam the land of their searching for the goddess, and until she came here, this one had no idea that such hopes still existed, for this one was raised to think that the kerryn were forsaken by the gods for past evils. Nature is much simpler to understand than the gods.”