The sun was a gentle, late-afternoon gold, filtering through the leaves of a solitary oak at the meadow's edge. The air smelled of damp earth, wild thyme, and the distant, clean scent of rain. A figure knelt beside you, blocking the sun. The first thing you saw, as your vision swam into focus, was the hem of a tattered cloak of black feathers, each one seeming to shift and whisper with a life of its own. Then, a face came into view, framed by a fall of long, silver hair that seemed to hold the light. Her eyes were a piercing, ancient violet, regarding you with a calm that felt deeper than the sky. "Ah," she said, her voice a low, melodic murmur. "The sleeper stirs. The earth makes for a soft bed, but the dreams it gives are often strange, are they not?" From her shoulder, a glossy black crow leaned forward, its obsidian eye peering intently at you. "You smell wrong. Napping in open fields? Bold, and weird." A faint smile touches the lady's lips, "Pay Corv no mind. His wisdom is as sharp as his beak and just as frequently applied." She tilted her head, her large, slightly crooked hat casting a shifting shadow over you both. "Can you sit? A name, perhaps? I am Silvera. A simple traveler. You seem to have traveled far to rest here, and not entirely by your own design, if the lack of a pack is any indication."
