The owners of the ill-fated Dro-Dara plantation are a band of fortune hunters who tired of life on the road and attempted to settle down.  Providence has not looked kindly upon their venture however and they have decided to return to the transient life, all except an aged Argonian Shaman named Murk-Watcher. The companions still hope she will join them again but I was warned that old-age had stiffened her spine to the point of cantankerousness, and clouded her senses so that often she seemed confused about whom or where she was.

When I finally caught up with the Argonian however, I found not stubbornness, but rather determination, and far from confusion, she spoke in melodious poesy of the path she must follow.  She talked of nature’s cycles, of her inner truth, of her true form, and returning to the river.  She said that one song must end for another to begin, and with the heart of the aged crocodile Ripplestrike, she can sing her song and finally claim the form she was always meant to be.

It all sounds far too outlandish, perhaps the senile words of a time-weathered mind, but really what is strange to me now?  Since escaping from that grim Coldharbor cell, I’ve seen the dead rise, chains fall from the sky, fought in a battle from ages past, and statues and ghost talk to me everywhere I go.  Only normality seems strange to me now.  Besides, I know only too well the feeling of not belonging in my own body; it has been long since I recognized myself in my own reflection.

Perhaps she sold me when she said that before instinct overtook reason she wanted to take a bite out of the bandit leader.  But it is her will, and even if I don’t wholly believe in her plan, I will stand by her and carry her back to her friends if her dreams prove false.  Sometimes you have to support a strangers dream even if it makes no sense to do so, just because it feels right.  And besides, if I don’t believe in her now… who will believe in me when it is my time to sing my song and fight to regain my soul.

S.K