Downstairs, Kire was nursing a few welts from sparring, while Daryll and Ed stood around the table, observing a map and some sheafs of paper with writing on it. She had leather armor on over her travelling clothes, and a thick cloak folded over a chair nearby. “[i]Boy, you really were in a mood,[/i]” Kire muttered. 
“[i]Sorry. Just had a lot on my mind I needed to get out.[/i]” 
“[i]That’s usually me, though,[/i]” Kire replied with a smirk. “[i]But I already had my workout today.[/i]”
“[i]Children,[/i]” Daryll muttered, shaking his head, despite the fact that he was the junior of the three.

When she sensed the others approach, she turned towards the staircase anticipating their arrival. Once the two came into view, Kire grinned. “Hey. Afternoon.” Daryll raised his hand in greeting, while Ed nodded solemnly, his eyes on Ysaryn. 
“[i]I wasn’t sure you’d come,[/i]” he commented in Elvish. 

Kire looked between the two of them; Ed told her what had happened after the quick and brutal sparring match the two of them had just before lunch. She cleared her throat and turned to Ruli. “Would you confirm something for me?” she said, taking one of the letters. “So in one of the reports, they had one of the afflicted try to write down an account of what they had seen. He had apparently had difficulty talking about what was happening. While the villager spoke common tongue well enough, he seemed to be finding it hard to understand Taakalon, despite having spoken it all his life. He wrote this, then after a few hours, he was himself again, and couldn’t understand what he had written.” 

She showed the letter to Ruli. While to the Amrians around the table the script was incomprehensible, Kire recognized the characters from the signs she had seen around Cordon. To the residents of Úvano, the untidy scrawl would have been difficult to read, but still understandable: an account of how the man had fallen into some strange trance, wandered through the forest, and emerged on the other side feeling hot and stark naked, like he had walked through a desert, his clothes completely burned off.