The reunion was unexciting, a quick 'hello' and customary glance to check who had made it, and in what shape, before Rae was ushered out of the courtyard. The two days leading up to it, however, had been filled with fretful waiting and pacing, the sole item in his mind being the nagging feeling that something bad had happened. Now that he himself had checked over the rest of the party, assuring himself that they weren't in any more danger and that they would be well cared for, he suddenly found himself with a lot of time on his hands. Time that he put to use exploring the place.

Keepers' Temples was the name of the place, he had found out. As Talon had explained it to him:

"It started out as a sole temple (if temple it could be called), a hermit's solitary cabin built far away from other people and everything associated with them. The following happenings are unclear, but as legend goes, the hermit found herself not so isolated, stumbling across more huts when out foraging. The hermits living in the forest stuck to their own glades, seldom venturing farther than the immediate boundary of their own trees. They had an understanding, their own pact, wordlessly created and wordlessly followed."

"How did a group of hermits form this?" Rae interrupted, moving his hand to encompass the tree-corridors they were walking through.

"I'm getting to that part," Talon said. She cleared her throat, searching for the rhythm of the story once more. "That pact was never something solid, never written down, but still they did not dare approach one another for fear of overstepping the bounds. But exactly because of that, there were no bounds, never any that were written down or discussed, and as such they got the courage to meet up with each other.

"It started out with little bump-ins whenever two of them would go out at the same time. Again, it's unclear how many of them there were, but they had lived nearby each other for a long time and they hadn't so boldly crossed paths before, so it was a sudden happening. Our hermit, Ulna'ii the Watcher as she was later christened, had gotten so fed up with meeting the others every time she went out that she called them all to Najiidi - the holy cave from which the Death Birthing river runs. They were unaccustomed in dealing with others, but the other hermits too shared Ulna'ii's feelings about their frequent meetings with each other, so they went, each passing on the message until the entire forest came alive with movement on the night of the convergence.”

Talon fell silent.

"Well, what happened at the meeting?" Rae prompted, curious to learn how the story ended.

"No one knows."

"Sorry, what? But it sounds so... important, like the defining moment of the temple. And no one knows what happened?"

Talon nodded.

Rae spluttered, "You don't know the single most important moment to the temple's foundation? But... you know everything leading up to it!"

"It's guesswork," Talon corrected. "Like I said before, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding this. There are theories, of course, but none have enough evidence for us to make a final decision about this. If they rush into it, make the wrong decision, and then later on it's found that it was all a mistake, that will be a blow to our credibility."

"Which theory is the most likely one then, from the point of view of the temple?" Rae asked, still confused and trying to wrap his mind around this.

The masked shrugged. "It depends who you ask. The majority of the theories agree that the creation of the Keepers and the temple's tree-grown buildings have to do something with the first of the Najiidi meetings. We use that as the base, but as to what follows next, there are disagreements. I can see that you still desire more concrete answers. Very well," Talon hesitated for a moment, "I shall share the one that I believe in.

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"At the first meeting of Najiidi, Ulna'ii and the other hermits started talking. Ulna'ii had started the meeting with the intention of getting to the bottom of things, to ask the others to respect the unspoken pact and stay out of each other's way - or at least hers. But they were hermits, many of them having been so for years upon years, and interaction was awkward, twisted, stilted. Voices croaking from disuse, the meeting went askew as they started chatting amongst themselves, reminiscing about plants and their various uses to city-life and everything in between.

"It was so that the meeting slipped from between the Watcher's fingers, like grains of sand, but Ulna'ii didn't mind. As much as she yearned for the times when she wouldn't come across others every time she left her gale, the pockets of conversation thawed her spirit, making her remember the joy of others, the joy of connectedness. They were all outsiders, all having forsaken human contact, and yet remembering it so fondly that you would've guessed the thought of becoming a hermit never crossed their minds.

"That's what sparked the Keepers' Temples and our mission. The desire to remember, to preserve." Talon finished, sounding oddly weary. "Of course," she added as an afterthought, "this is just one of the many theories. There are many others."

Rae was just as confused than before - even more so now. The memory of that wondrous moment where Talon had shared the magic with him, and how she'd retreated when he tried to push for answers floated to mind, and Rae smiled gratefully, not wanting to somehow offend his guide again. "It's beautiful. I don't understand it all, but it sounds beautiful," he said truthfully.

Talon nodded. “I appreciate your honesty,” she had said.

Rae thought of that while he wandered through the hallways, lost. Up until the reunion with his party, he'd had worry nagging at him and keeping him busy. Now, boredom nipped at his heels.

He thought of asking a masked to direct him over to the rooms in which the shipwrecked crew were resting in, but he'd been hounded out just hours beforehand, apologetically yet firmly told that his fretting was not helping, and he'd wandered through the hallways ever since, looking for something to distract him. He'd been at the Keepers' Temples for about a week, the days where he was conscious now overtaking those where he wasn't, and he started to learn some of the schedules. Breakfast was usually combined with lunch, later than the breakfast he was used to, but earlier than lunch. It was more filling, too, with multiple courses and festivities, yet as extravagant an affair as it was, dinner never failed to be even grander.

Every evening the unmasked, the Promems, would be paraded through the courtyard - he had the suspicion that it was a different one every time, but he hadn't confirmed it yet - then fed by their attendants, after which they would get up and dance. Their dancing reminded Rae of a band of puppeteers that used to pass through Miladiel. The Promems were exactly like the puppeteers, the only big difference the fact that the puppets they played with were real people, and there were no visible strings. 'No visible strings, but it feels like the masked are on leashes nevertheless,' Rae thought, shuddering as he thought of the latest evening performance - one reminiscent of a ballroom dance mixed with a religious ceremony. It was something he'd never seen the likes of before, and it put his teeth on edge. He usually left during the dances, but the festivities went on long during the night, the sound from the courtyard carrying through the maze of hallways, rising until it reached a crescendo, energy travelling through the very walls of the complex and then - a sudden stillness.

There were still a couple of hours to go until dinner. The more he thought about it, the more the sudden feeling of being watched intensified. Rae looked over his shoulders, checked down both ends of the hallway, but nothing. Things like this were what amplified his belief that the place was alive, the trees some sort of guardians, keeping dangers out of the temple complex - or keeping the people in, a tiny voice in his mind piped up.

Faced with a choice between aimlessly wandering the hallways like a ghost and seeking out excitement, Rae picked the latter one. He turned around, retracing his steps, now walking with a purpose in mind. Dinner was, after all, still some hours away, but the Promems had to be doing something until then. Talon - when she did share information - was fairly cryptic, and with that mask on, it was hard to tell what she was really thinking. If the masked were the Promems' attendants and servants, then perhaps the overseers could explain things more clearly. If not, then at least he would find out how the Rememberers spent all the time before dinners.