Snippet #2620148

Marran dodged between a couple of people and quickly sidled into an alleyway to catch his breath, things were going from bad to worse. His original plan had been to slip into the town as early as possible to pick up some food and drink, which had gone well enough, even if the stall owners had given him some funny looks for his appearance. If he had snuck out then everything would have been fine but something had caught his attention, a merchant had been selling several beautiful scrolls he claimed to have recovered from an old temple, on reflection his story had a few holes in it but at the time Marran had been too interested to consider, it had taken more than an hour for Marran to examine the scroll in enough to detail to consider it worth buying and then a few more hours for him to be able to read through the writing and by that time the streets were thronged with people.

It was not that Marran had a particular problem with crowds but it seemed that there was some sort of festival starting up and he had never bothered to memorize the towns layout and so reaching the comfort of the forests again without bumping into anyone was nigh impossible. Even then they may just let him pass but the little he understood of this village seemed to indicate that they had some kind of issue with the local spirits which may lead to out of place looking people being asked pointed questions, especially if were heading out towards the woods.

Marran sighed and slumped into a sitting position and tried to fight off the fatigue that had crept up on his body in the last few minutes. His dreams had been getting far more vivid recently and in the past few days he had started having strange bouts of sleepiness. The town most likely had a herbalist or medicine man he could speak to but once again that sort of thing would lead to unnecessary questions, it was better to wait it out. Besides the content of his dreams had not taken a turn for the worse, his parents had told him a lot of stories about what might come for him in dreams and such stories still loomed large in his fears.

He looked towards the end of the alleyway and glared at the people walking past, trying to determine of their was enough of a lull for him to make his way back to the forest. In the end he decided there wasn't, perhaps when this festival or holiday really got going there would be enough pedestrians around to confuse or escape any inquisitive people, until then he could try and at least locate the herbalists, things rarely got better before they got worse.

Gathering himself up and pulling his hood down to shield his eyes from the sun, he set out into the street.