2.13.21 - Past Shadows

On the way back to the Rennon farm, after our morning of flying, I decided that I would look for some cool flowers for Eli before we get there so that I would have something to give to her. When we arrived, Ma Rennon was not too happy to see us so soon after our last visit. She told me that Elisande was out in the woods with some goats because of what Rhys had told them last time. I tried to sneak up on her in this nice grove with a large dead tree in it, but she was too perceptive and caught me which disturbed her mindless humming. We talked for a minute about her practicing (or rather her lack of practicing) with her dagger that I gave her; she was reaching into a pouch with her dominant hand instead of her dagger which seemed a little odd, but we headed to the house for supper. As we approached the house, we saw Cannon and She-rah finishing some repairs on the goat pen and Rhys was playing some music for the goats and talked about an escape plan for them. Elisande also mentioned that Pa Rennon was back and he had gotten some dogs to help protect the goats at night from some creature in the woods that was taking them. We agreed to do a perimeter check of the farm before dinner to look at what might be coming at night. Rhys found an old sandy pit that had weird swirly patterns in it, but no footsteps or tracks.

   We headed in for dinner, where there was a place set for Pa rennon, but he did not show. When we inquired about his whereabouts, we are told that he probably lost track of time at the other farms where he was teaching them about the new techniques that Rhys had taught him. Once we settled down in the attic room we had been allowed to use, I headed out onto the roof for my watch which passed by uneventfully. Then it was She-rah’s turn and about half way through her watch she heard the dogs start barking ferociously and she watched as a dark shadowy form flew into the pen with the goats and took off for the tree line again leaving behind a blood trail. She seemed to think the dogs said that five goats were missing. The noise woke Rhys who turned into Tiger-Rhys and sniffed around while the other two of us were roused and came down. Tiger-Rhys smelled something like the preserving chemicals used when tanning or preserving something and followed after it and the blood trail towards the grove where I had found Elisande when we had arrived in the afternoon. However, now we saw there were about four goats grazing and one corpse at the base of the stump and the smallish shadowy form of a dragon perched atop the charred stump just watching the goats and eating the corpse.

   We decided to come back in the morning when the odds might be more favorable to fighting a creature made of shadow, and when we returned to the house we saw a man in a bright yellow shirt atop his horse singing a drinking song (Pa Rennon) who we startled into falling off his horse who I had to go chase down and put away. I came back to find Cannon shaming him for missing dinner with his family before we all go back to bed.

   In the morning, only one goat was missing and we all had a lovely breakfast of porridge and fried tomatoes while we asked if we could borrow the dogs to go find the beast we saw last night. We asked Eli if she knew anything about the grove she had been hanging out in and she told us it was where she kept a really cool puppet of a dragon head that Pa had brought for her from Phlan because it had never been picked up. I noticed she had a very large pouch with her she didn’t have the last time we were there so I asked her about it. She told me that the “little one told her not to talk about the pouch” and the little one (a creature that was smaller than Rhys with wings) that  had come to her because “the ma’ams wanted to talk to her.” Eli said she traded her shadow to the little ones because it wasn’t a very good one anyways and the little ones offered her a very cool thing for it. But in order to show us, we all had to go to the shadowy side of the house because it didn’t like the sunlight, and from within her pouch Eli pulled out a crystal dragon skull encrusted with gems which she said helps her let the puppet remember who it used to be. When asked why she traded her shadow for this cool object she told us it was because it was a misbehaving thing that didn't always do what it was told to do when she sent it on an errand which was something the ma’ams had taught her to do when she was on the island. Before heading off to deal with the shadow dragon, I grabbed the skull from her pouch and told her that no matter what she couldn’t go to her grove today because it was very dangerous.

   We said our goodbyes before grabbing a dog and following the trail back towards the grove to deal with our shadowy goat thief. Once we got there, we saw no trace of any disturbance apart from a slight bit of blood where the corpse had been the night before. Cannon went about hitting the stump with lightning after I found the puppet and we distributed the puppet and skull amongst ourselves so as not to put them in the bag of holding with the very dangerous stones we got from Cassette. After the lightning storm had stopped not much of the stump remained and a gaping hole opened up below Cannon and he fell in as the puppet flew from his  backpack into the form of a shadow dragon. This form tried to eat each of us and both I and She-rah had our turns falling into the pit as it kept growing larger. I ended up smashing its puppetry skull and finished shredding the puppet so that the shadow dragon could not come back to haunt anyone any more.

Then we went about setting out the skull for Cannon to call lighting onto and when he was finished we saw nothing had happened to it, and Elisande was standing at the edge of the grove staring at us. She then told us we were bad people who she hates and never wants to see again because we stole the thing she gave her shadow for, destroyed her beautiful grove, and destroyed her puppet before running off back towards the house. We headed off towards the lake where we were to meet with Tamsin the next day and we made camp for the evening.