20th of November
9am

“It bes freezing.” Virana muttered to herself, wrapping her heavy woolen cloak tighter around herself and hunching her shoulders trying to shield her neck from the wind. The heavy storms that this month had brought hardly seemed about to let up. Around her, the trees in the outer circle of the sanctuary were being robbed of their leaves. Decaying, soggy wet brown leaves formed a carpet on the floor outside Virana’s house.

But the wind would have to be at least then times as fierce to keep Virana from her duty. She was a shaman, and the holy ground of this Sanctuary needed to be tended to as much on these winter days as it did in spring or in summer. Many of her fellows were out working in this weather, wrapped in hides and wool to shield themselves from the weather.

“Goodsie day.” Virana greeted them as she passed. Two children, a boy and a girl, were playing with what seemed to be making an improvised kite of leaves and firewood. Their artfully crafted toy would probably be no match for the storming winds rushing through their hair right now, but the process of making it (their were carefully selecting large leaves and stitching them together with needle and thread) seemed to give them a great deal of pleasure. They were working with great looks of concentration on their face.

“It wills bes flying higher then thems tallest trees!” The girl said when she caught Virana watching them. She returned to her work with as much diligence as before. Higher then the tallest trees in the Pagan Sanctuary would be quite a height, Virana thought to herself smiling.

She wondered how her fellows and friends in Auldale Park were doing right now. The small pagan ‘base’ their needed a lot of work still. It was greener than most of the city, but plants and trees often had trouble growing. But patience was a necessity when working with fragile seeds and soil long tainted by the surrounding cityfolk and Hammerites.

Passing deeper into the forest, Virana relaxes her shoulders a bit. The trees here were tall and thick, and shielded her from the wind somewhat. So great and big indeed, that Virana often wondered exactly how long they had been here. She liked to imagine they were quite older than any pagan alive now, perhaps planted by the Woodsie Lord himself, so his children would have somewhere to live.

Indeed, the Pagans owed much to the shelter of the sanctuary. Though Virana herself had not been there to see any battles with Hammerites, she knew from history that the great forest and the treants that had allied themselves with the children of the Woodsie Lord had saved her fellows (or more, their parents) before.

Virana had stood still for a while against a tree, enjoying the short break it offered from the freezing winds. Thinking to herself about the nature of these great trees, she had thought to be alone before, but now she noticed someone else in the distance. “Goodsie day!” She called, walking towards the figure.