Day 80,

I wonder how Vernon’s been getting on?  We did sort of leave a mess behind for him to clean up.  A few messes really, but not all of them were ours.  The literal mess of dropping things in the street to lighten the load on the cart in our mad dash out, yes that’s on us.  Also the situational mess of leaving him by himself to get said cart back to town on his own.  And the metaphorical mess of figuring out how to answer any questions people might have had about the unknown hooded figure pulling the cart.

Oh.  Wait.  What do we say if anyone asks about that?  We really should have thought of that while Maiko was still here to give her input.

I talked with Lin and Cass about it.  The best we can come up with is to be vague and change the topic.  If pushed say it’s a friend of mine from the outskirts who doesn’t come into the Village proper much.  Lin floated the idea of saying Maiko was a helpful nature sprite, but Cass shot that down.  Sprites don’t generally show themselves to more than one person at a time, much less run through the streets of the Village.  And even if people did believe it, that just invites a whole new set of questions and speculation we don’t have answers to.