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<Comfrey>

Lowering her voice so as not to embarrass the young woman with the bowl she said softly, "A few bites and wait for your stomach to adjust. It will help."

Mikal

He decides it's not worth pushing Darian, if she doesn't follow. It was mostly a curiosity anyway.

Instead, he returns to the main question. "Yes. The forest would be if traveling due east. Stay on the road and you'll come to Cragside. That's my goal, for now. It's the biggest place in that direction and my best chance to find work before winter really hits."

He looks at her curiously. "Are you intending to visit there as well?"

Darian

"Do not intend, but if it is on the path, then will," she said simply. "Will need shelter as well since we have no more den to winter in."

She paused, offered another quick smile.

"We, Mikal and Darian and Longtooth and...Talia?, will run together to this Cragside. When we come within a day or two, ye tell me, and I will hunt extra to have meat and pelts to trade."

Mikal

"I am pretty sure we're only about a day away now, Darian. Inns like these are usually placed about the end of a good days travel so people have a logical place to stay, and if I judge my own journey well enough I expected to hit Cragside pretty soon."

He pauses in thought. "How many days do you think you'd need for hunting? If we're that close, are you better off just going on to Cragside and then venturing out from there every day for a few days to hunt and get some pelts to sell, or would all the city people scare away the game?"

Conrad

He was indeed coming back with the flagon and cup in hand, putting the cup on the table and pouring fresh water into the vessel.

"The bread and butter will be here in a moment." he said quietly. He pulled out the chair next to the girl for Comfrey, offering to seat her as proper before finding a seat for himself, back to the wall. He planned to say nothing more until the girl had eaten her fill and replenished herself.

The young woman who called herself Camelia did slow at that point, trying to swallow the large mouthful she had, chewing and chewing at the hunk of meat in her mouth, unwilling to surrender it. The irony here was that it would be unlady-like to take the food back out of her mouth and opt for a smaller effort. So she acted the wildling and kept at it until she could horse down the over-sized portion already in her mouth.

"May I," she then said with a nod to the wooden cup. Resting the utensil in her bowl, she took up the cup and drank until she had emptied it. And then she set back for a moment. She wanted to eat more and more, but the Lady of Aterra was right. Slow. She had eaten little but some roots and grasses and that ended with disastrous results recently. She didn't want to gorge herself in haste only to lose it because she ate foolishly.

She would wait a bit and forcibly slow herself and that would give the squire a chance to speak. She dreaded it, but it was inevitable. To get the food she had to sit in their company. To warm herself she had to be near others who wanted to do the same. She liked people and loved hearing stories. But hers was not one she was looking forward to telling. Perhaps the Squire would do most of the speaking... he looked as though he might have things to say and a want and desire to hear them said.

Darian

"So close? Is good. I had thought to trade the hart hide with the traders," a nod of her head towards those other folk, "but a tanner would offer more."

"And maybe we will get some small game on the way."

"Have ye been to Cragside afore?"

<Comfrey>

Seeing all was well in hand she smiled her thanks at Conrad and figured it was time to get to know this person a bit better. Besides, it might take some focus from Kris... Camelia..whomever.

To him she asked, "I know you had introduced yourself earlier but umm... I was a bit occupied. Might you share why you came to greet me before?"

Mikal

"No." He shakes his head. "Spent most of my life on the High Tarn. Lowside and Highside. A bit more along the edges of the Dirkwood. Probably seen most of the small villages between the Griffin Hills and MacMurphy's Tavern. This is my first time East of there though."

Conrad

He gently poured the water cup full again before addressing Comfrey.

"Of course. I was dispatched to provide you an escort from here to Craigside. The roads can be an uncertain place and the church wanted you to have protection." he said. "Do you have a mount of your own?"

The young woman put her empty cup down, with a glance to it's insides and then took up her bowl again, still holding it close to her face. Still hungry she fought the urge to shovel in food as though this might be the last meal she would get for a long time. Trying to keep her head down, she did manage to look up and over the edge of the bowl at her two current benefactors. Soon enough they would turn their attention back to her, but for now she was content to let them get to know each other.

Darian

"I not know this Griffin or Mac-Murphy. We denned in Yagherspring. It was north of the Grey Men village. We followed the edge of the Dirkwood when we left until it turned back west and we found the wide trail. I have seen many new things."

Mikal

"Hmm. We lived not too far apart, I think. My family's farm was near the Silk Creek ravine. Um.., a little bit northwest of the Grey Men village. I too have seen many new things since I left home. Some good, some bad, but mostly just new. Still, all-in-all I'd rather have never needed to leave I think."

He sounds just a tad melancholy, but shakes it off quickly.

"So, tell me, what new things have you seen? Or better yet, tell me of Yagherspring and you friends and I'll tell you about my family."

Darian

"Yahgerspring is no more. It was burned and those who stood with it."

"A winter sickness took many of the pack...two hand-full of years ago I think it was. All my year-mates and she who birthed me. Those left were many hand-fulls older or younger. Only friends were ruffs, now only Longtooth. We are last."

"When I heard of my master's death, the farmer also said a ... mill...is made where Yahgerspring was."

<comfrey>

A quick sidelong glance confirmed what she'd thought. Time from needing to talk was a benefit to her charge. time to get more clarification.

"Really," she asked with an upraised brow. "Tell me more about this. What makes you suitable to this task? Whose squire are you?" She smiled at the end of her questions to soften any roughness in the asking. He needed to talk right now. And her mother had told her once, when they were still thinking of a dowerless marriage and her need to attract based on personality, that most men liked to speak of themselves. Besides, it might be his duty to do so as well. She admitted to herself she hadn't listened to those lectures as well as maybe she should have.

Mikal

"As with my home. Though I burned it myself before leaving to make sure the Grey Men would get no use of it for themselves. I took the clothes on my back and a small token to remember my family and just started walking. I was lucky to find Killian. He took me in before I died of exposure."

He nods. "More we have in common, Darian. But I did not mean for you to tell me of Yahgerspring now. I meant for you to tell me about it as of old. How it was when it thrived. When your pack was full. Before the sickness and the Grey Men came."

Celi

With her half-formed plan for splitting room expenses holed and sunk before her eyes, Celi decided not to wait for fortune to smile on her as far as the stable was concerned.

FIrst she presented her completely empty (and thoroughly cleaned by finger and bread) bowl and milk cup to the daughter who was collecting empties, then approached Pauli Threeleg as deferentially as her somewhat independent manner would allow.

"Sire, I would have a word, 'an you can spare the time for it. My name is Celi, from near Dirkwood on the High Tarn."

The mention of what had once been home still evoked mournful memory; but it had been a long time since she'd walked the tall grasses split by the dark rush of the Blackwater.

With her stew near it's end, bread was delivered to the table on one of the rounds that the young girl seemed to make in a near constant display of motion. When this little girl wasn't rescuing strangers from the chill of wet nights, she certainly kept busy with other chores.

But when the quiet one got up and moved to speak with the kindly man, whose injuries were obvious and time worn, and she couldn't help but watch her, that is so long as she didn't get caught doing so by her. So many people and all of them so different. It was like walking the streets on a Market day or festival day in Trundle. But on those times, she was always in the Imperial Procession and well under guard, kept at a distance.

Darian

"There was laughter and singing and celebration of good hunting. We traded with farmers and traders, pelts, hides, meat, feathers, beads and tools of bone. Sometimes those from our Pack would go to another and theirs would come to us. She who birthed me was from another pack."

"I had six year-mates, all but one, female. Some were being groomed to go to other packs until the winter sickness came."

Mikal

He glances up as the girl he had winked at before finishes her meal and gets up to go talk to the innkeeper. The other girl is also finishing her meal, so perhaps with supper coming to an end the atmosphere in the common room will turn a little more relaxed.

Many of the roadside inns he's been to on his travels featured some sort of after-supper entertainment. A singer. A dancer. Musicians. Story-tellers. One even had a magician of sorts. He wasn't very good, but it was a novelty. Sometimes the visitors entertained themselves. Sometimes that was even more fun. Mikal himself had recited poetry once or twice when no one else would step forward. He had his mother's bedtime stories to thank for that.

He turns his full concentration back to Darian as she begins to speak. He listens carefully, noting again how different this girl's life is from what he knows.

He nods in agreement as her story brings back some of his own memories of home. "That is what to remember. The happy times. Not to dwell on the sad. I remember my mother singing me to sleep. Telling me stories of heroes, ladies in distress, knights in shining armour. The Lullaby of The Tarn. The Flowered Path. The Battle of Jeminy's Hill."

"I remember the once or twice we managed to get to Findal's for Midsummer's Day, dancing around the town square. Laughing. My father throwing me in the air when I was too small to mount a horse by myself. My Uncle teaching me the ways of wood tools."

"That is what I try to keep in my heart. It keeps me warm at night. The rest is best locked away. To be taken out and examined from time to time to stoke the smoldering fires of vengeance. But kept locked up, lest those fires burn out of control."

Darian

She knew the farmers did things like he described. Jacob had had a family; she remembered that. His grown son and his family had come to visit once. The children did not play the same games as the Pack children. Jacob's son's woman thought them too dangerous.

But she grew puzzled again when he told her that the memories kept him warm at night. And this vengeance...she was not entirely sure what he meant, but she had an idea.

"I have hart hide and furs to keep me warm. I have some for trade if ye be interested."

"This ving-ance...I heard some talk of it...a trader said it is payment for harm caused?"

Mikal

He smiles softly. "It is not that kind of warmth I mean. It is the feeling inside, in your spirit, your soul, that happens when you remember the good times."

"As for vengeance. Yes, it is like that. Payment in kind, though only return payment for bad things done to you."

Darian


Another sip of mead before a flash of white teeth.

"Ah, like a good hunt and pack mates to share the kill with. Those were good days."

Her expression became contemplative.

"Maybe that is what the Grey Men sought when they came with so many the last. Or maybe they just wanted some to come back. I wonder how many Master took in hunt."

The thought caused her eyes to light with excitement that dimmed as she realized she would never know.

"It would be a grand tale worth much honor. I am sad I will never know it."

The Heartwood
The Plainsend Inn at the foothills of the Highgaard Reaches

At the mention of the word 'vengeance' the big ruff at the huntress' side shifts and offers a soft growl.

As if not approving.

Darian

She looked down at Longtooth and scratched his head. "I know," she told him.

Looking back to Mikal, she explained, "It is not our way, this ving-ance."