Morning at the Isolated Boarding House

[Admin]

You slept fairly well. Probably the best rest you've had in weeks. The room wasn't what you'd call "well appointed", but the bed was a real bed, there was water for washing, and there was a lock on the door. The odds and ends that the skeleton bellhop picked out from your pack in exchange for your first two nights and food were pretty trivial. If that wasn't a mistake, you could just stay here for quite awhile.

The conversations last night were strange, first with Heim, then with Miss Gentle, but it's certainly not the strangest thing you've endured in this... place.

The common room is bustling with activity. It's much brighter and cheerier in the light of morning than it was in the dim firelight. All sorts of homey decor is hung on the walls - though there might be a few more sharp or pointed farm tools than is strictly comforting - and a bunch of yellow dandelions is set like a centerpiece on each table. There must be forty patrons here, and more coming down the stairs. Odd, since up those stairs was your room and maybe five others.

The server seats you at a table with several strangers, not bad looking folk, and whispers "Miss Gentle requested that you lot be seated together, supposedly. And she gave me a rather large tip, so there you sit."

The offer this morning is a turnip omelette or a plate of pancakes and jelly. There is a rooster (a normal sized one) wearing a pinstriped suit (a very small one) on the table in one corner of the room, glaring at you and everyone else as he pecks at a plate of pancakes.

When the Server returns with your food and the last of your table-mates, she addresses the table in a grave tone, "Miss Gentle sends her regrets, I think. She is somewhat smaller this morning, and will be staying in her room. She did, however send... this... note, I suppose."

The server sets a child's picture-book on the table. It appears to be the story of The Gingerbread Man, except instead it's a loaf of pumpernickel with human arms and legs that runs away from a pastry chef, a politician, a mime and a mumbling horticulturist. The Pumpernickel Man is tricked by an oboe player while trying to cross a river, and instead of riding safely across, he is splashed until soggy, and then slurped up with the oboe.

The moral of the story is, apparently, don't trust oboe players. A small scrawl a the end of the book - Miss Gentle's note? reads :

"I did not heed it. I did not read it. I would have loved it, liked it, shared it, shouted it. Would have never doubted it. Such a grand story. Such a sad end."

Your pancakes have arrived. You do not remember ordering them. They smell distinctly of gingerbread.