Midsummer has come to Rowangrave, the Country of Wayfarers, and with it the Long Night Festival draws near. From Quietbell in the east you have come, Cirrus Mist, on the last day of your seventeenth year. You travel with Sister Margrite and Father Velholme, cold guardians to you your entire life, and shepherd the little ones of Quietbell Orphanage on their one yearly pilgrimage.
Rowangrave City is nothing like your Quietbell. Here the people live in houses with many floors, and with each floor another tenant. Walking among the cobblestone streets, neither horizon nor treeline is visible, but scents waft through the air—bread and spice and sometimes sewage. In this city there are Churches, plural, to gods beyond the Lord of Birth and Renewal. But you do not tarry long in the City. For just beyond its southern gate the Festival has begun.
It is twilight and the air is warm and sticky, warmer still by the torches and braziers lining the market stalls. Both cityfolk and villagers from outskirts settlements like yours have flocked to the fete. And for this Festival, famous among all the Lands of Mist, travelers from strange countries have come. You feel some relief in the crowd, finding yourself among the long-eared and the horned, the tusked and the blue-skinned and the feathered. Rowangrave City is more cosmopolitan than your Quietbell, and you see no scornful looks upon strangers from strange lands here. One of the children squeals with delight as a kenku passes.
“A giant walking bird! He’s even queerer than you are, Cirrus!”
You look down to the child, a brown-haired boy about eight years old named Quel, and smile patiently.
“That’s right,” you say, “and if you wander off I won’t be the only one you have to worry about stealing you up in the night and gobbling you whole!”
You pick up the child and swing him through the air a bit. He laughs with glee, and soon the other children are begging for you to play with them too. The ruckus comes to an abrupt end as Sister Margrite harshly clears her throat.
“Take this, Cirrus,” Father Velholme says to you dispassionately, handing you a coinpurse. “Amuse the children, and when the bell rings midnight gather them back here at the entrance. Keep whatever is left.”
“When the bell rings midnight,” you repeat. A firefly passes in front of you, flickering green.
“Indeed,” Father Velholme says. “After that you will be eighteen, and no longer a ward of the Orphanage. Take rest at a city inn or wheresoever you decide. Your life will be in your own hands.”
You gaze at the man. Taller than you, wide and hairless, lacking even eyebrows or a beard. He was like a father to you all these years, in his own way, and Sister Margrite like your mother. Together they named you and raised you from infancy. Now that bond—no, that transaction—has come to its end. And your bond with the children will come to its end as well.
“This is what you wanted, no?” he says.
“It is,” you say. “It is.” For Quietbell was a suffocating place, and you were treated like a pockmark upon its cheek. No—there could be no option but to leave. You just hadn’t thought it would come so soon.
Father Velholme pushes the coinpurse into your hands. You take the coins.
Twilight draws on, and the children are growing restless.
It is 8 o’clock in the evening of the summer solstice. The Long Night Festival awaits you.
[You gain 15 silver pieces.]
What do you do first?
A. Take the children to the food stalls.
B. Take the children to the game stalls.
C. Take the children to the Vistani camp.