You were only going to pickpocket the sour faced necromancer. Just a quick dip in his pockets to snatch the scroll of enlightenment you knew his thin fingers had plucked from a crate. No harm done. You had seen it first after all.

Except when you slipped through the shadows of the library, you found yourself watched. A girl, small and trembling clung to the necromancer as if he were her nanny. She didn’t warn the thin man and she didn’t have to. The spirits that clung to his skin like the stink of death were watching as well. Their gaze held more than a warning. They carried a promise of death, so palpable that your skin crawled.

The necromancer didn’t acknowledge you, his attention remaining firmly on the bookshelf before him. Beside him, the girl shifted anxiously, her wide eyed gaze uncomfortably direct. You slipped back into the shadows, perhaps the knight had something worth snatching.

Every time I see this post I think of them

Many of these stalks (and thus, the whole individual) are flowering for at least the second year in the row, including specialized flower stalks that emerge directly from the ground and do nothing but flower.

Please *do* put these on Wikipedia, it confuses me

(image description start. A collection of photos of American bamboo flowers and branch spikes. Most of the flowers are reddish purple, with some green edging, and pale yellow tassels hanging out. The branch spikes look like thick needles, in either purple to match the flowers, or green. One photo shows a segmented rhizome above ground, that is purple, and another shows the base of a cluster of thick branches, with multiple horizontal stripes. Image description end.)

Sage: My Recluse...P-Perhaps this is similar to the last time you were effected by magicks and a kiss will break the spell-! It would be...a valuable hypothesis to test!