Interactive Quest the price of having a soft heart

It is under the cover of night when a group creeps down toward the water’s edge. They keep to the shadows and start and stop, alert as deer stepping out into the open. They are fine as birds, small as fawns.

They are not deer but children.

They do not know the meadow, they do not know Denocte at all. Their bodies are covered in the dust of roads. Their limbs are weak with the exhaustion of travel. Each child is angular, their skin pulled too tight over their bones, their ribs too broad for their starved bodies.

The trio keep close to one another, the younger two cling to the elder and guide her down to the water’s edge. Youth shines sorrowfully out from their skinny bodies. It attempts to thrive in the eldest child - maybe only a year into her life. The youngest seems only just weaned and the middle child, a colt, the one who leads them, is somewhere in between.

Keeping alert, keeping silent they reach the water’s edge. The youngest drops his grip on the others and dives down to drink from the silver-lit water. He cries out for pain bursts in his mouth and the water is cold in his empty gut but he drinks it deeply and desperately. The middle child guides the elder down to the water and whispers, ‘put your head down, drink.’ The moon shifts as the filly lowers her head to drink and moonlight lands across the dirty bandage that stretches across the place where her eyes once were. It ties beneath her jaw. The rag is bloodied and dirty, filled with tears and agony.

That cloth is as dirty as the children, it bears the sins of their crimes: to dare to drink, to eat, to live. They are refugees, these three children, escaped from the tyranny of the Day Court King, Raum. He rationed his people on too little food, too little water. Raum was a monster king who kept resources of food and water locked away, punishing those who tried to steal it, even to survive. He was an orphan once, but it seems even children are not above his monstrous regime. Even children are punished viciously for their crimes. Will he ever be stopped?

The moon reaches out to light across the meadow, it is only the three children and the meadow seems to stretch around them, guarding, guiding, protecting. Denocte is safe, yet they do not know it and, even if they did, where are they to live?

They do not see you, Moira, and when they do they may just flee. But if you can convince them not to run, are you ready to ask them why they are here, alone? Can you bear to know what happened to their parents? Be careful though, if you learn why one is sightless, another is mute and the other cares for his two broken siblings, it might make your anger glow, bright and furious and reveal more awful revelations than you ever wished to hear this night.