Cindergrove

A goliath woman sat at the center of laid out blankets and silks, heavy incense filling her corner of the barn across from the taphouse. A number of goods were on display, from weapons to healer's kits and everything in between--if one might be of the religious persuasion.

The massive woman was sat cross-legged in the center, humming in a voice deep enough to roll like thunder. "I've been told to sit here and wait a while," she rumbled. "Come join me and speak of your situation. My gods may be able to help you, if your heart is strong."

Lilote didn't have much of a plan when she'd snuck out of the tavern into the pleasant spring morning other than to avoid Azerius for as long as possible. She'd turned up at the door of the tavern the night before, weeping and terrified after having fled from the Sorcerer That Wasn't Hers, and he'd let her stay but had told her they'd have a talk after her rest.

She didn't want to talk. He might not approve of her running away. He might say what her mother the Bellows Daemon said and tell her that the Sorcerer Who Wasn't Hers was allowed to sell her to whoever he pleased since the Sorcerer who'd made them all was dead. She didn't want to be sold by him. She'd heard him talking about her, calling her wasteful and a bad deal and a trinket made by an old woman going senile. He didn't love her, not like her Sorcerer had. He wouldn't try to find someone who'd love her like she deserved to be loved.

Maybe if she hid in his town long enough she could turn up at his door again late at night and he'd just tuck her in again like he had the night before. She'd be able to make herself cry easily if she had so, since just thinking about how nothing in her life would ever be the same was enough to make her cry.

But there was a scent in the air, delicious and tingling, that made her mouth water. It wasn't food, it wasn't drink, it was magic, delicious strong magic, tangled up somewhere and waiting for her to go and have a discreet chew. She'd always been a good Daemon and never licked the magic out of the spells that her Sorcerer wove, but if this wasn't her Sorcerer's magic she didn't owe whoever made it such diligence...

The goliath's rumble made her shriek and bare her teeth in a way that her sculpted features morphed into a waide grin. She'd been so distracted by the smell of magic that she hadn't even noticed the woman sitting among them. The goliath was huge, even huger than Azerius, and Lilote knew with a drooping heart that she wasn't going to be sneakily licking any magic today.

She shuffled forward as asked and daintily knelt on the blanket, leaning forward so that her back bladder didn't squash against the floor.

"What happens if my heart is weak?" She asked timidly, staring up with wide eyes that were scared under their smile. "I don't think I have a strong anything."

The goliath huffed, and looked down on the tiny little creature that sat before her with a child-like shriek. What a curious thing. Her gods held the surefootedness of the mountain goat and the strength of a yeti, the roar of mountain landslides, the fear of utter annihilation... and yet for this tiny creature to approach her as she approached her gods...

She gave a rumble not unlike a laugh. "Well, little one, perhaps it is not my gods who seek to aid you. My name is Maveith. What is yours?"

"Maveith... I'm Li-Lilote." She warbled. This time she tried to smile sweetly, to lean into the emotion that her features had forever been shaped to express, and she almost succeeded in doing so. Maveith seemed friendly, not snappish, which enboldened her.

"Are there gods who look after the weak?"

"That, I am certain there are. There are powers for every being that walks and thinks. There are also those who would take advantage of the weak; perhaps you came to me because you have need of strength."

Maveith leaned faaaaar over, down, looking Lilote close up. "Lilote, may I ask your lineage? I have never seen anyone quite like you in all my years."

Leading her donkey along, the feline woman stops between a goliath and a fae looking creature, who the Tabaxi seemed to be a 'shiny elf's inwardly. The two were deep in discussion, so she waited to be addressed first, smiling among the two as she gives her dear Comprend a rub on the flank

"There there~, this one must wait for the kind fae and the giant to be over with, then we will ask for their assistance" she purrs

It was nerve-wracking enough that Maveith was leaning in like that, but with two tall people suddenly looming behind her and talking it was enough to make her squeak and hide her face with her fan-like tail.

"Um!" She squeaked, panicked, not wanting to answer in case Maveith told her that even the gods thought she should be sold. She glanced behind her, craning her gaze round the air-filled bladder on her back, to get a glance at the hairy human and - a long-eared horse?

"I didn't know horses could talk!" She yelped out, latching onto the distraction the pair represented. "I thought you just pulled carts! I'm sorry, you've got very nice ears! I didn't call the others smelly, they're lying!"

Gods above, she was strange, but a Tabaxi like herself could see the oppertunity

"Why yes! Thanks to the power of Moonserum. He is... getting used to speaking. But that is not all it does of course... 5 gold pieces for a vial" she purrs, pulling out a green bottle of her medicine

"But that's all I have..." Lilote murmured in a little voice. She didn't want the Moonserum, she didn't know why the beautiful hairy woman was offering her the Moonserum, but she was so tall and everyone was looking at her that she felt pressured...

"H-how does it work?" Maybe the hairy woman was a Sorcerer. Maybe she was a Sorcerer looking for someone to keep and coddle. Lilote stood with an awkward bend and stretch to not knock her back bladder and turned, grabbing her tail again to twist between her hands as she stared up at Silver Maw.

"Is it a magic potion?" Her nose twitched and her lips parted as she huffed for the taste of magic distinct from Maveith's wares, tasting for power like a dog huffing for the scent of prey. She'd eaten the night before when she'd licked the magic clean off the lock that was holding her in her wagon, but she could always do for more...

(Since you appear to be magically inclined, taking this medicine will allow you to identify its contents. Thus, I'm going to use the notion you passed the "perception" for it)

When the bottle appeared ahead of Lilote, her inclination for detecting magick detected quite something different. Magic, sure, but it was mana one would find in... well... excrement. This was a bottle of sewage masked with grass clippings and herbs. No medicine at all

The Tabaxi smiles

"A medicine to allow magic to flow free through you, made with plants basked in moonlight and harvested under stars..."

(If we're using DnD terminology, just think of her as a permanent Eldritch Sight/Rod of Absorption!)

Lilote's eyes narrowed, though with the shaping of her eyelids her suspicion looked ambigously happy.

"I don't believe you." She answered flatly, voice trembling less, though she still clutched her tail for courage. "There's no, um, I don't think there's magic in there at all."

She turned to the donkey, eyes still narrow, utterly sure that he too would try trick her.

"Is that what she feeds you?"

Maveith watched the exchange with a curious look. "I am well versed in the curative properties of most potions. Allow me to check." She reached one calloused hand forward, over Lilote's head, palm extended to the Tabaxi.

The mule snorts in response. It couldn't actually talk. And now, the Tabaxi's jig was up. She flicks an ear in some annoyance, pocketing the fluid away with a sigh of frustration

"This one used to have such an easy time making quick coin. She fears that the day of oils and snakes is over. She will have to try more... direct approaches. But, this is true, Silver Maw, this one, tried to trick you. You have caught me, strange... person. You are a person, it seems, but many would look at you and think otherwise.

You look of Fae. Or of Eldritch flavor. But you seem kind enough. She is, sadly, in need of your assistance. She does think your alarmingly alien appearance may help in this matter, but she has been burgaled by some bandits up the road to this town of Cindergrove. She must take dear Comprend and attach him to it, before she too loses her cart, and her only method of transporting her good.

In exchange... this tabaxi will teach you in the ways of talking...? She sees the young Fae Elf is shunted in this regard. Tabaxi can teach Fae Elf many things of silvery tongues" she hums, holding a paw out to her.

Upon the request by the goliath, she squints, and tosses the vial to the massive woman

"It is a bogus potion. A farcical elixer. Simply to be sold as if it were medicine. Tabaxi has no guild or craft. She wanders and uses her mind to make her coin"

This hairy person - Silver Maw? That's her name? She chattered like water pouring into a bathtub, a great endless rush of words that were sweeping Lilote's attention away as she tried to follow on with what Silver Maw was on about. Silver tongues, burgling, fae who look like her, she'd need to sit down and think hard about what exactly Silver Maw wanted of her if she weren't distracted by the very first rush that had poured out.

"A trick!" So she'd been right! She stamped her little sandeled foot. "Don't try to trick me! What would you have done? Taken all my money?" She'd been tricked before, teased before, had her favourite belongings taken before by the other daemons jealous of her being the Sorcerer's favoured, but now her Sorcerer was gone there was no one to tell to. She turned inelegantly to stare wide eyed at the Maveith.

"Maveith, she tried to trick me! That's not fair! You wouldn't have let her take my money, would you?" There was a hint of desperation under her tattling, a grasping as she tried to find someone who'd fix the world.

Maveith accepted the bottle, which looked dainty in her hand. "Hmm, it is true; however she admitted to her deed and you are safe enough. However," and the goliath turned her attention on Silver Maw. She gave a light grunt as, clanging in all her heavy armour, she rose up, up, up to stand over the pair of them. "I do not welcome false deeds. Azerius keeps this place a neutral ground for good reason. Those who wish to stay here keep honest for the duration, or they are... taken care of." She crushed the bottle in her fist, and the faint scent of sewage began to waft over them all.

((I've heard Silver Maw has had to leave the game temporarily, so I'm taking liberties here and puppeting the character out of the way. Silver Maw! If I'm wrong let me know and I'll delete this and allow you time to respond))

It was obvious even sitting down that Maveith was huge, but as she rose and rose and rose up into the air Lilote was completely daunted by her size, so much so that she didn't even realise Silver Maw had fled from the threat until she'd skittled backwards far enough that she should have bumped into the mule already.

She trembled, staring up at the underside of Maveith's nose and chin, before cupping her little hands together to yell up to the looming goliath.

"I promise I'll be honest if you sit down!" Honest, what a large and daunting word it was too, but if Azerius and Maveith expected honesty then Lilote would have to confront it - when she felt sure she wouldn't get booted by Maveith's impressively sturdy feet.

The goliath waited until it was just the pair of them again, then began wiping her hand free of the fetid mess. Plucking glass from her palm like it was a mere inconvenience, she sat--and just then noticed Lilote was still around. "Ah, little one. What do you have to keep secret, then?"

After a moment, the woman pulled for a small talisman from a cord around her neck and murmured a prayer. The most delicious and tantalising smelling magic began to flow from her, into the sewage-marked scratches in her hand. Its flavour--even from a distance, was marked by fresh rain and storms, and the hint of ozone marked by recent lightning.

Lilote's mouth dropped subtly open as that scent hit her and thoroughly distracted her from the question. What delicious magic that was, fresh and sweet and disappearing all too quickly as it sank into Maveith's wounds and knitted them together.

She blinked rapidly as the last of the scent faded, focusing back on the conversation. Had her skin been thinner a blush would have been visible, but her embarrassment showed only in the twitch of her shoulders.

"Um, well..." Oh, she's scared. "I'm not... I don't think I'm a fae? I'm... I was made. By my Sorcerer. She made a lot of us to live with her and work for her. I do have parents, and they work for her too, but she shaped me into something special. She was amazing! But then she..."

Oh, died is such a big word. No one had know what to do when she passed away, for she was the one who decided everything and who made someone new if a task arose that no one else was built for.

"She, uh, the other Sorcerers came. Her friends. And they divided all her books and treasures and, um, us. No one wanted me." That was awful to admit too. "So Sorcerer Legitt was going to sell me. But he was stupid! He locked the carriage with magic, so I licked the spell away and escaped. And now I'm here."

She'd taken hold of her tail again some time during her monologue. She twisted it tightly, looking down at the fan rather than Maveith.

"Do I have to be sold? Is that the honest thing to do? I don't... I don't want to be. Not by him. He just find who'll pay him, not who'll love me."

"Slavery," the goliath sneered. "If it were me, I would have waited until the person who'd come to purchase me arrived, and then slain them both. But..." She eyed Lilote in a way that might feel painfully down-her-nose if it weren't for the fact that they were so different in size in any case, "I can see that may not be your strong suit. If you are strong enough to escape, you are strong enough to be free."

She offered a grin, the tattoos on her face shifting as her cheeks and lips pulled up, revealing her teeth. "You are in a position to prove yourself. Your strength and your cunning are all that you have, yes? Perhaps we could help one another, before I pick up and carry on." She turned to one side and pulled a rolled up old piece of paper from her pack. It was dirty, a bloody handprint occluding a small chunk of it as she rolled it open. On it, a map of what looked like mountains and forest and a coastline. "I have been tracking some fiends that managed to take something from me. You say you eat magic, yes?" She leaned forward again, scrutinizing the tiny daemon. "Can you eat it from a person?"