You find a seat at an empty table and finger the dwindling copper coins in your pocket, your stomach growling, even at the faint promise of boiled potatoes and chopped carrots in a meagre broth. The barmaid shuffles over on nearly silent footsteps as you slide a single coin onto the table, and then, after a small hesitation, a second one. Fuck it. You can sleep in the stables tonight instead of a bed. You've managed worse.

"Food," you mumble while barely even glancing in her direction, following it with a hasty "...erm, please." Your mama didn't raise you without manners.

The coins are whisked away into a fold of skirt, as the barmaid disappears into the kitchen. You take a moment to survey the strange tavern you've found yourself in - if, in fact, it is a tavern. Never have you heard a local pub so full and yet so eerily quiet. There are no raucous shouts or whoops or hollars. No spilled drinks. No dancers, shaking the rooftops with the pounding of feet to a lovely fiddle or drum. No musicians at all, come to think of it. And yet - and yet. Nobody here seems at all disturbed by that, either. The gentleman in a grey travel-worn cloak seems content to eat his soup by the fire. The couple in the corner seems happy to merely gaze dreamily into one another's eyes. Even the cook in the back, barely glimpsed through the swinging double doors, seems to be in no particular hurry as he prepares the evening meal.

Your reverie is broken as the barmaid slides a small pie in front of you. Goddess, she's quiet! You didn't even hear her approach, and that's really saying something for you. The pie smells very very faintly of chicken, potato, and spiced root veg. Your stomach grumbles, and the sound is strangely loud in this cadaverously quiet place. You look up at her face, and register it for the first time. Not a beautiful face, but strangely compelling in a kind of forgettable way. But it's her expression that stills your hand, even as it reaches for a spoon. Her eyes are wide, nostrils flared. This is not the kind, but practiced neutral expression of a friendly waitress, but rather someone in the grips of absolute terror.

"Get out." she mouths silently, in exaggerated words, even as she slides the spoon toward you. "GET. OUT. NOW."

You look down at the meat pie on its wooden plate before you. It's bubbling as if dangerously, delightfully, piping hot.

What do you do?

#MastoDnD

"It's not stealing," you think wildly to yourself as you reach for the pie. "It's not stealing because it's already been paid for." You remember putting the two coins on the table. One coin, then another, both whisked away by the waitress. So why does it *feel* like stealing? Your hand hesitates, and for a moment, you see on the table, two copper coins, flashing in the late midday sun where the pie should be. You shake your head to clear it. No, no that already happened. Your hand reaches for the pie again, and the coins vanish like a mirage. You expected the pie to be hot, but instead you find it to be strangely cool to the touch, as if several days old already. You pocket the meat pie in one of the deep recesses of your coat and stumble to your feet. When did it become so muzzy in here? So hard to breathe?

You blink and shake your head again, turning for the door, to find that blocking your way is the elderly gentleman in the grey travel-worn coat. The one who had been sipping his soup by the fire. Not looking so old and frail now, his frame seems to entirely fill your vision.

"Now now where are we going in such a hurry?" he says with a pleasant lilt in his voice - as if talking to an old friend. "We've only just started getting acquainted."

He smiles thinly, and his smile is the smile of cadavers. The smile of the moon on a moonless night. The smile of a god in his domain.

What do you do?

#MastoDnD