Trelaine trundles by seemingly oblivious to the activities going on around him...He gives a cheery smile and wave to the guardmen on duty who noticing his slightly odd behavior give a simple nod in response....Trelaine leaves Prodigio heading generally in the direction of his grove.

Above the normal hustle and bustle of city noise, the Guardsman on duty hears a strange sound. After a moment's concentration, he can discern the bumping and scraping of a heavy wheeled object making its way along the cobbled main street towards the gate.

The squeaky wheelbarrow appears to have a mind of its own as it wobbles along, leaving a snail trail of soil and splashes of water in its wake. A small elf with a mass of fair hair and a bright red face from all the exertion looks close to collapse as she tries to control the load, which seems to consist of.... bits of rusty painted metal, a half-empty pot, soil, a sad-looking plant and rather a lot of druid.

The guard signals to his mate, the other side of the wall and they watch in amusement as the elf attempts to negotiate the last few cobbles and wheel the barrow onto the compacted earth that makes up the road out of the city.

With barely any breath left for pleasantries, and not daring to loose her grip on the handles to wave, Alasse just nods and smiles before taking a deep breath and steering the barrow in the direction of the Grove.

A few minutes later, there is the sound of shearing metal, a shriek, a KERFLUMPF and a loud splash....

... followed by a small curse, as the wet elf peels herself off the druid, now face-down in the mud with a wheel for a pillow!

'If you wanted mud wrestling i'm sure Didier is more practiced than me.' says a very muddy looking Trelaine...Helping Alassa up first he then passes her a somewhat bent pot plant before pulling himself from a exceptionally sticky patch of mud with a lot of squeltching and slurping sounds....

'Hmm nice day for a trip' he says...

'are we going anywhere nice? my previous kidnappers have been awful rough to me I do hope your not of the same ilk....it generally results in the bad guys or girls getting very beaten up by the nobodies...although you are a nobody aren't you.....oh dear I guess that means Kiran's having another of her little bets again isn't she?'

Just as he says that a rather large clod of mud drips off the top of trelaines head...

'Hmm my turn to push the barrow?'

“I am not in the habit of kidnapping druids and getting them plastered, Trelain - in fact I am quite offended that you could even think such a thing.

“You seemed to be heading towards the main gate when you ran out of the tavern, in quite a state of panic I might add; so when you knocked yourself out on the hanging flower bowl I thought the safest thing to do would be to bring you to the Grove where you could sit quietly in familiar surroundings until you felt more like one of yourselves again.”

Alasse rightens the wheelbarrow, and re-pots the plant as best she can with the remaining soil topped up with squidgey mud. The watering can is now bent as well as battered and rusty, and the little water remaining in it pours sideways as she tries to clean her face.

“Actually, you are a lot heavier than you look. You must have absorbed quite a bit of moisture during your recent hibernation in the bog…That might also explain some of your recent behaviour – sunstroke can be quite disorientating…”

As Alasse rattles on, trying to talk her way through her embarrassment, Trelain helps her replace the barrow wheel. The sheared metal pin that originally held it in place is useless, so they whittle down a wooden peg and Trelain hammers it home. Job done, Trelain takes the handles and trundles off, Alasse squelching along behind…

“Thank you, Trelain… you know… you really should do something about that barkrot…”

'Running off in panic, doesn't sound like me..i'm normally quite a level headed chap if i do say so myself. I do apologise....The whole waking up to find myself being wheeled into the wilderness with big lump on my head normally means kidnapping..I just assumed the same.' Listening to the loud squeeks...'I hate to say it but i think your barrow may be beyond my master skills to fix.....However the grove does sound like a good plan...I've got a new batch of thundermushroom wine on the brew if you wish to join me....The town tends to make my head spin a bit after a while.'

Having barely stopped for breath in his mutterings since he left the grove Trelaine continues to bombard Alasse with a stream of mutterings, opinions and general gossip as they arrive back in town.

'....and so I said to that Ghorn fellow...CHOP DOWN THE TREE OF LIFE!!!!! you must be joking....but he continued in his ways and stormed off as he used to do...Ogre fellow tended to become quite adjitated at time...I wonder what happened to him...quite a nice chap when he wasn't talking or doing anything.....AHHHH the town at last...see quiet as can be, not a air elemental or army of ninjas in sight....I wonder why we came here looks awful dull don't you think...I visitied a town like this a few months ago, awful thing people being killed in the tavern, fights breaking out, undead at the walls...better at the walls than in the soup I suppose although I do remember finding some most unusual beetles in the broth once. Anyway where shall we go now we are here a bit of excitement I think TO THE TAVERN!!!!!!.....'

Trelaine without waiting for answer strides off in the direction of the Tavern....

Alasse stops to catch her breath. The druid had been moving at a fair pace all the way from the Grove, and rambling non-stop about all sorts of random trivia. It was as if his mind was running through the story of his life: memories of people and places, traumatic happenings, thoughts, feelings, sights and sounds from his past, at an exceedingly fast rate, and the overspill was falling out of his mouth.

Whilst Alasse was sure that most of the druid’s ramblings were just that, she couldn’t help feeling that somewhere amongst it all, a couple of the comments were somehow significant.

“You go on ahead!” she cries out, hoarsely, as Trelaine disappears around a corner, “I’ll catch up with you later.”

*After all, he should be safe enough in the tavern…shouldn’t he?*

Alasse wanders out through the City gate, deep in thought.

She had missed much of the discussion in the tavern about the latest exploits in Escavon, but she had seen the physical condition of those who had recently returned and knew that the adventure had been no picnic.

“Just hordes of undead, dark elves and volatile potions, undead T'cra, imprisoned guards, guards who made attempts to incarcerate us. Oh yes and a Dark Knight…” she had overheard Sir Niall say to that funny mage, Book. But Escavon was not so far from Traileat forest. If such things could happen in a hardy human mining town, what other evil could be lurking in her homeland?

Alasse adjusts the sack on her shoulders to a more comfortable position and hurries back to the grove.

“I’ll leave a note for Trelaine, so he’ll know where I’ve gone”, she thinks to herself, “although I doubt that anyone will miss me!”

Trelaine leaves town in a bit of a rush, he starts towards the grove but then stops as if he's had a thought and then turns and heads in the direction of the nearby transport circle.