Welcome to Gaia! ::

He follows the humming.

It leads him through the crowds, into one of the little fairy-roads that criss-cross between Ashdown's major throughfares. The fairy-road is oddly deserted; usually they're crammed into the small, arched space, two people barely able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and yet somehow fitting three, six, nine; but there's no one but Chester, and the shops' windows are dull, no lights from within.

At the end of the little alley there's a fountain, and sitting on the lip of the fountain is a woman. Her skin is white as snow, her hair red as blood, and she is humming a new song now, an atonal little melody perfectly counterpoint to the giggling of the water.

She stretches out her long, long legs and seems not to notice Chester at all.

The woman stopped humming and looked up, a questioning arch to her perfectly-plucked brows. "Who's that?" She spotted Chester and smiled, the corners of her whisky-brown eyes crinkling up tight.

"Oh. A human child. I've been waiting for one of you." She gestures. Her nails are french tipped in red. "I have a message. Will you take it?"

She gestures again, more insistently. Come hither. "I cannot tell it from so far away," she said. "You must come closer."

The woman frowned, but she rose from her seat. She moved oddly, like something that wasn't used to the resistance of gravity and air, too slow, like her head weighed several hundred pounds. But she crossed the space between them and lifted one hand, jerkily. And she set it on his head, and then--

Tell them there is a ball.

In the eighth month.

There they will find their quarry.

That is where Adoelle is.

The words resonated oddly, like echoes bouncing off the wall of a cave.

"Thank you, human child," said the red-haired woman, and she disappeared on a breath of sweet-voiced humming.