Chapter Two: The Hippocampus on the Cracked Lintel

She doesn't exactly return the hug, but she doesn't cringe away from it, either.

"I don't know where they went. I shouldn't have hid. I was stupid."

The day grows long. At this point, the party should make some decisions about what to do with the girl and whether to question her further.

"I'm Aylie," she says. After a pause, she adds, "There's a goat farm. I went to a goat farm before."

Aylie shifts her position, suggesting for the first time that she might be willing to move out of her corner. "What if the metal man comes back? He'll try to hit us with the circle stick. And we'll die."

ETA: "That's why we want to help you leave - so the metal man can't find you. We want to get you someplace safe." Leth chimes in.

Is the circle stick a mace, do you think, or some kind of magic staff?

It's still afternoon.

"Okay." Aylie says, sounding rather uncertain. She slides off the bed. "I don't want him to find me."

With a little direction and coaxing, she puts on a shawl and a pair of small, worn boots from a clothes pile on the other side of the room.

You've got her to the stairs when she stops and says, "Wait! If I leave, nobody's gonna keep the lamp lit for Mama and Daddy. They're ancestors now. They need a lamp always lit." She looks back toward the hallway, anguished.

Persuasion roll plz

Aylie does as Zangua says.

Aylie is cooperating with the party now. You can try to ask her for more info and/or try to find the goat farm.

There are two trails leading out of Five Stones, one going south and another going southeast. Aylie is pretty sure they took one of those to the goat farm, but she's not sure which.

The following is a condensed version of Aylie's best recollection of events, as they occurred, edited for clarity and presented in chronological order as best you can tell:

"Daddy was at the barn and we heard him holler and scream and everybody came running. Daddy was lying on the ground and he wasn't moving and the metal man was standing over him. The metal man was very tall and very thin and he had red eyes, a lot of red eyes, and he had a long stick with a circle on it. Mama tried to hit the metal man with a shovel but the metal man hit her with the circle stick and she fell down and died. Dommo told everybody to stay back. The metal man talked. He said there was a girl in the barn, where was the girl. Everybody said they didn't know about the girl in the barn. The metal man hit Nestro and Nestro died and he said tell me where the girl is. And we all said we don't know there wasn't a girl in the barn please don't kill us. Then the metal man hit Big Jon and Big Jon died and he asked us again and Dommo said wait, wait, I think I know where this girl would have went, I'll take you there. And the metal man said to ride a horse and Dommo got on one of the horses and he rode off and the metal man followed him and the metal man could run as fast as a horse.

"When Dommo and the metal man left, Trent started crying and said he'd lied, he saw the girl yesterday, and he didn't want to tell anyone cause he didn't want to get her in trouble, and when the metal man came and asked about her he got too scared to say anything, and Nonna got really upset and really mad and said the metal man was going to find out he was lying and come back and kill all of us and we all had to leave Five Stones. And then they started seeing that Daddy's blood was wrong and Mama's and Nestor's and Big Jon's too and Nonna got scared of that too and said they had to burn them. And I didn't want to see them burn so I ran away and hid in the place under the little house where the lamb got stuck.

"Then it got to be night and I was too scared to come out still and when it was morning I wanted to get out but everybody was gone. I went in the big house as fast as I could before the metal man could come back and kill me."

You can surmise from the context and the way Aylie talks about them that Dommo and Nonna were the owners of the farm, and that her parents worked for them.