Cassie Ainsworth

“Hi, um, hi.” Bellara tries, for the second time, to get the man’s attention, now with an anxious little wave to go along with her timid stammering. The man finally looks at her. He’s human, same as everyone else she can see. He’s wearing clothes that look… well… different. Same as everyone else. Actually, she’s the different one here, and she knows that, and she doesn’t love it. There are a lot of them — everyone else — all bustling around this enormous, overwhelmingly bright room she’s stumbled into, and they’re all human, and all dressed similarly, in clothes that look different, and they all seem like they belong here, or at least like they know where ‘here’ is, which she, importantly, doesn’t. She’d awakened in some sort of transport, which is funny, because as far as she knew, she hadn’t been asleep. And now she’s here, in this big, bright, crowded place, the only elf, the only one dressed like this, the only one looking lost and out of place. It’s like visiting Minrathous, but worse. Much, much worse.

But at least she has the man’s attention now. He’s sitting in what appears to be a work station, an enclosed desk in the center of the room, so she thinks he must be important. Or have some answers at least. He’s also wearing a tag on his vest that reads Charles, which is probably his name. He doesn’t look happy to see her, but she’s not entirely happy to see him, either, so that’s fine.

“Help you?” he says, sounding remarkably unenthused by the prospect.

“I don’t know! I hope so!” she says, trying to sound chipper and coming out a little hysterical. “I think I’m lost? I mean. I don’t know where I am. Or how I got here. Which sounds pretty lost to me!” She tries to laugh but coughs instead. “It wouldn’t the first time. But it’s the first time like this. Sorry. That doesn’t make any sense, probably. Can you, uh, help me with that…?”

She trails off, her voice growing smaller as her already fragile confidence starts to dissolve. Charles looks incredibly put upon, but he’s started rooting around behind his desk as if he knows what he’s looking for. She waits, doing her best not to fidget.

“Name?” he says.

“Oh! Um. Bellara? Sorry. I mean. Yes. I’m Bellara. Bellara Lutare.”

He answers her continued babbling with a grunt, thrusting a packet of paper in her direction. “Welcome to Darrow.”

Wordless, she takes the packet and stares at it. There’s her name, in big, excessively neat letters: Bellara Lutare.

“Um,” she says. “Thank you.” She looks up at him. “What…?”

“It’s all in there,” Charles says with a dismissive gesture, and goes back to his book, making it inescapably clear that as far as he’s concerned, this conversation is over.

Bellara stands there for a moment, feeling both very small and very in the way, what with her huge pack and all her accouterments. No one else around her is carrying so many things. It makes them all blend together, and makes her seem even more of an obvious outsider. “Okay,” she says in a tiny voice. “Thank you.”

She takes her packet and wanders until she finds a little out-of-the-way spot where she can sit down on the well-polished floor. She takes a few deep breaths, then opens up the packet, spread out its contents neatly in front of her, and starts looking through them all one by one.

About twenty minutes later, she’s gathered everything back up and gone outside, into the streets of this new city.

“Okay,” she says to herself. “Darrow. Okay.”

She looks at the dizzying, unfamiliar skyline. The sky looks normal. There’s trees, and grass, though it’s all a lot neater than what she’s used to. There’s noise and smells and movement — machines, contraptions, all kinds of strange sights. Too much to catalog right now. And there’s people. Lots and lots of people.

Well, people are what she needs. If they’ve been brought here just like she has, they’ll have their own understanding of the situation, their own experiences and advice, their own data. And data is what she needs. Lots of it.

She picks one at random, walks up to them, holds up her packet and says loudly, “Hi! I’m Bellara. I just arrived. Could you tell me… um…” She stops to think. “Maybe… who you are, where you come from, how long you’ve been here, and… well. That’s probably enough for now. I’m sure I’ll think of more. If you don’t mind?”

She probably should’ve led with that last part, but it’s too late now.


[Welcome, Bellara! As I said in her City Hall post, she's already given herself the basic primer on Darrow and drawn a lot of her own conclusions, so she doesn't need the rundown so much as she wants to know everything about everything. As she will be wandering around like this throughout the day, she can approach you literally wherever you want. The first things most people will notice about her are: really long pointy ears, a simply staggering amount of trinkets and jewelry, and some fancy-looking face tattoos. Open as long as it needs to be, ST/LT welcome forever.]