#tobedetermined

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The Bronze Raven. Quite catchy isn't it? It's a quaint establishment; one with enough room for about two-hundred bodies if they squeeze together to make the room. Never a dull moment within the cobblestone and red oak walls. Merry melodies and lively laughter can be heard reverberating throughout the building, and candlelight and fairy fire can be seen dancing among the furniture and bounding up into the rafters. The smell of various roasts, stews, and pastries consumes the senses while the patrons drown their sorrows and celebrate their joys with ale, mead, and other spirits. The perfect place for a band of adventurers to find solace and warmth. Never a dull moment, indeed. 

Many lives changed when those tavern doors opened to them for the first time. I know mine did. I was “down on my luck,” as some would say. The truth is, I was destroyed. My life, if I could even call it that anymore, was in shambles. I had lost every aspect of myself that made me, me. I was a storyteller; silver-tongued and eloquent, full of life and drive, and emboldened by the mere prospect of adventure. Now tattered, my words would get caught in my throat, for the stories in my collection, the adventures in my journals, and the life I once had plagued my mind and weighed far too heavy on my soul to ever share in full. 

A storyteller rendered incapable of telling stories for fear of... well, quite frankly I’m not quite certain anymore. I knew in the beginning why I held a deep fear of telling my tales, but that knowledge is lost to me now. A failing memory doesn't serve a storyteller well, but I suppose it suited me; still suits me. Perhaps my stories became too tragic for the ears of the audience I used to gather. Perhaps they grew into something too horrific for any mind to stay sane should they hear them in full. Perhaps they were...

Apologies. 

It seems as though I'm losing myself to my thoughts. 

The Bronze Raven, in concept, was meant to be a safe haven, a sanctuary, for all who entered; the tavern keepers were successful in this endeavor. The keepers care not about where the patrons come from or the path they are taking. They simply welcome all with open arms. 

The day I found The Bronze Raven, I was lost, though that's a light way of putting it. I had hardly any recollection of who I was before my plummet into the waking nightmare I found myself in. The tavern keepers, however, found me. And after taking in the sight of my horror-ridden excuse of a body, the couple gave me journals with a glint of melancholic familiarity in their eyes. These journals were filled from cover to cover with stories; stories that I felt I should know, but they were missing from my collection. 

The invigorating tales of adventure within the journals were unraveled, disjoined if you will. There was a deep ache in what little remained of my soul at that realization. It felt... wrong.