Music to Break the Storm – Sheryl, the Fae-Touched – 19.11

---

Sheryl felt really good about what she and the others had done this week in Ku’l Goran. She felt like she finally contributed something important to the people. Something that could turn the tide of the war in their favour and give them the leg up they have so desperately needed.

The only thing that put a dampener on her good mood was what happened with the Shunned.

Why didn’t they listen? she thinks to herself, frustrated. We didn’t have to fight one another! If the Giants win, they are no better off than everyone else. It would, in fact, be worse for them!

Sheryl stepped over a fallen log in the Feythorn Forest, finding the path she had happened upon the previous week. It was small, barely big enough to be called an animal trail. Its path leading to a little clearing, a quiet place she started using to compose and work on her music. About thirty feet in diameter, with another circle ring of mushrooms and stones just inside of it, she couldn’t say why she was drawn to this little place. Maybe because it reminded her of home. The pixie ring, the way the light came through the branches, how it grew warm like midsummer and stayed warm long past the sun’s setting...

“I have returned,” Sheryl says in Sylvan, looking into the clearing. “I brought bread and wine to share, should your feet be wary and your stomach need filling.”

There was no one there. But this was the way of things. Entering such a ring unannounced invites trouble, and she had learned that the hard way many times in the Feywild. The light here was golden, and had a soft haze to it. Maybe there was magic here, though Sheryl couldn’t detect anything. Maybe the magic was older than anything she knew about, which was highly probable. There seems to be many such places in Kantas.

“May light and music ease your bones, so that I may come and go, as it please you,” she spoke reverently, playing a little lilting tune on her harp in accompaniment. Then she stepped into the ring and felt a warm breeze brush her hair from her dewy forehead in acknowledgement.

Sheryl pulls out the bottle of fey wine she bought from the Fair Winds – one of the many benefits of so many successful performances with Mathew and Arkadius, and just on her own. She also pulls out some fruit, a slab of cheese, a small cut of seasoned meat and a still warm loaf of bread.

As she sets up the clearing for the work she’s about to do – making sure to set up a second serving for a guest, should they arrive – she starts talking to herself out loud getting a feel for the words she may want to use in the ballad she came to compose.

        The fae-daughter had seen the war
        Seen the mighty warriors fell the giants
        But she was a small creature, barely a wisp of air
        How could a breath such as she become the notes to break a storm?

        “Music,” she whispered out to the wind.
        “An orchestra whos melodies are intertwined,
        The strings a cry the horns a shout
        And a harp that dances all throughout.”

        But what if it was not enough?
        What if the giants proved too tough?
        “Then I shall find something bigger, something more imposing,
        And gather friends that will help with the opposing.”

She stopped and thought about how that sounded. It wasn’t bad, but it could be better. The rhyming was a bit too on the nose but it was a starting point. She made some notes in her little book, working on a melody – one that was inspired by the song that could be heard in Za’sSuul. Her harp alone would be a small echo of the song that played throughout the city when it was midday, but to those that have been to the city of art and music would know it when they heard it.

She continued to work like that for the rest of the morning, nibbling on the food she brought and drinking the wine she had. Sheryl made sure to keep some food and drink on the side for any wayward travellers that might come at the sound of her music making. At times, when she was really lost in the music, she thought she saw a horned face through the branches out of the corner of her eyes. But every time she went to look, the face disappeared. She smiled and shook her head, feeling rather than knowing who it might be.

Kruxeral, you cheeky devil. Spying on me again.

The sun moved across the sky and warmed the little clearing. Sheryl stretched out in the late autumn sun and wiggled her toes in the downy soft grass. Leaning back, she rested her head against her pack and let her wings lay flat on the ground, peaches and lilac coloured hair fanning out underneath her. Her magical harp shifted colours as she softly hummed a tune different than the one she had spent the last few hours working on. The trees seemed to bend closer as her eyes drifted shut and her mind began to wander over the events that inspired her ballad.

Her thoughts once again snagged on the part where she and the others – Taz, Bones, Laurel, Tiny, Kalta and Doralie, another bard whom Sheryl wanted to talk to more – had come across the Shunned in the tomb of Janna Windseer. She didn’t like what happened and she couldn’t quite put to words and music what she felt happened in that part of her ballad just yet. She didn’t know why they were there in the first place. Probably looting? But when she had said, “Stop! We needn’t fight each other!” the hobgoblin leader hadn’t listened.

“You are with a minotaur, so that means you are with them. We cannot take the chance!”

Were all the people of the Material Planes like this? Why did everything have to be resolved with a fight?

“I sometimes wonder if the Mundane Folk really are their own worst enemies,” she says aloud. “Always thinking, ‘You’re either with me, or against me.’ Tch.” She sits back up, the sun shining through the trees, making patterns across her skin. She looks to the spot in the branches where she last saw the horned face.

“I do not know what will happen in the coming weeks. I feel like… like things are building,” she grins ruefully. “Building to a crescendo.” Sheryl gets up and looks off into the distance. “I won’t fall prey to the whims of the mortal ways. You can tell the Lady that. But I won’t abandon them either. I am no great paladin, but I have something no one else does.” She looks back to the branches and sees Krux’s face blended into the wood of the trees and leaves, his expression unreadable in the shadows where the sunlight doesn’t reach.

“I have the Power of Song, and I will use it to help win this war," she says, conviction making her stand tall and strong.