<strong>Eshalu - the Girl in the Lake</strong><br/><br/>Eshalu's eyes narrowed the moment she sensed something beside her. Something was the best definition for it, because it seemed both physical and psychic at the same time - neither one nor the other, but uncomfortably both. Her heart raced in her chest. A mingling of desire, curiosity and alarm. Aeryn? Reliyian? Unlikely. She sat up, her left hand gripping the pommel of her shortsword tight. Very carefully, she peered into the water from which she had sensed the first contact with whatever it was that had drawn her attention. It was her image and then again it wasn't - just a for a moment, it seemed like something else was there. The sensation was not unfamiliar. The spirits of her homeland communicated in the same way, but the island's accursed nature demanded caution. That and there was no approach by the spirit itself - just a fleeting image, a shred of something bigger suspended in the vast tapestry of the forest's spirit-realm, but not quite manifesting a life of its own. A naiad would have teased - dragged her by her legs in the water, or sent a sudden, crashing eddy of cold water over her. But this was no naiad.<br/><br/>She paused, her muscles tensing - like she was anticipating something that her subconscious knew was coming. She was most vulnerable to contact with the fae-realm like this - her mind finely balanced between its contemplative and instinctive aspects. Then came the crashing of memories. The impact was immediate and Eshalu's back arched, like she had been physically struck. The floodgates had opened and she saw a life compressed in a few instants. The girl in the lake was the girl in her mind. The child, the girl, the woman - all in the space of a few heartbeats. Eshalu felt dizzied, overcome by the power of sensations distilled into their rawest, most visceral forms. Some of the memories were alien, but others struck a nerve, so that she felt like saying what she would have told her younger self: that all would be well, that life was learning, that tomorrow would bring a fresh start.<br/><br/>The contact was lingering, and the brief and powerful emotional connection she had formed made Eshalu long to renew that link and to find answers to the hanging questions in her mind she was already in the process of forgetting.<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide</div><div class="spoiler_body">TUP - all clear, I really got a feel for the disorientation and tried to replicate this feeling in my post<br/><br/>Roll Result: Eshalu rolled: 4d3, adding -7to the total<br/>Comment: Will check<br/>Result: 3, 3, 3, 2, <br/>Total: <strong>4</strong>, a <strong>Great</strong> success (Could have used one of these against the fungus spider...)<br/><br/></div></div><br/>"Who are you?" Eshalu wondered - a trite question, but spoken out of genuine bewilderment. She knew she was speaking in wood elven - fluidly and naturally, without the artificial heaviness of her limited mastery of the human tongue, but she knew that the presence would, somehow, understand, just like she had understood it, "I feel you close and know you are of and belong to this place."