Northstar Vale you are my friend

Red lips parted to tell her just how many lie within the Court before the druid followed up with a dismissal that was only polite — but genuine, all the same. The stricken again smiled at this, a thing merely charmed from her, before giving a flattered list of her waxen head and foretelling,  "There are thirteen who live alongside myself in ze Vale,"  and for now, there was no telling whether those very numbers would peter out or flourish in the coming moons. What with the winter almost arrived, there were expeditions to the Taiga yet to be had; it had been rather some time since ash had stopped falling from the skies.

"Your interest humbles me,"  and certainly not for the first time.  "How, may I ask, have your druids come into being? Long has it been that I have seen another settlement in ze Valley."