Late evening at the Edoras tavern, Dytha teases Langhund for his honeyed flirtations with Syaven and learns of a skill of his she could turn to her use.
Langhund broke from his thoughts for a mere moment, still within his silence, and his hand reached out to take hold of hers. He held her hand for a few moments, before letting go once again as if frightened in a way, drinking from his mead.
Syaven let him take her hand, and she let it drop gently by her side once he released it. Still holding an empty mug, she remained frozen and unwilling to move, as though aware of breaking some spell that held secret thoughts in the open air, and any movement would brush them away into nothing like a ribbon of smoke. "I have not seen," she said, in a careful, low voice. "I have not seen you kept captive by your own words before."
Langhund raised a hand to brush through his red hair and a smile tugged at his lips, "Neither have I." He looked to her with a smile and his eyes dropped again to the very last drop in his mug to finish it off, setting it aside, his eyes once again returning to her.
Brynleigh closes the tavern door with a gentle click of its latch, pressing her hand briefly to it afterwards. Faintly shadowed eyes sweep over the firelit room while she takes the few steps that bring her to the counter. A serene smile is cast at the sight of Syaven and Hund, before she fixes her attention on the barkeep. "A chilled mead, please."
Dytha |If a curse had been sent to beak that secret spell it came in the form of Dytha. Boots muddied from the summer rain, a foulness twisted in her face at having, once again, been sent by her parental overlords to the treeless, wind-strangled capitol of the Mark.
Syaven clearly gives up on her idea of refilling her mead, setting the empty mug aside on the low table without even breaking her glance to do so. She shifts back before her chair and settles before him, moving as gently as her voice remained, but her stare was as piercing and eager as a hunter's. "What fear keeps your tongue bitten, then?"
Langhund moved a hand across his face, and looked for his mead which he had now finished, and his laugh escaped from his mouth again - nervously or not, it was hard to tell. "The heart!" He simply spoke aloud, and rested his chin on his furs, eyes glancing up every now and then.
Brynleigh brushes her palms restlessly over her hips while waiting. The sound of the door reopening pulls her eyes about, and her brows lift gently at the sight of the newcomer. "Lady Dytha", she offers in greeting, dipping her head. Only upon looking twice does she notice the storm that seems to follow the young woman's entrance.
Dytha |The Rider didn't bother shedding her gloves to swipe up a mug from the counter and fill it with the communal mead. Tonight it tasted bitter. "Brynleigh," she almost spat. A shield, at least kept the woman's ire from gusting directly at the horsemaid.
Brynleigh finds the distraction of Dytha's entrance to be more arresting than the tender awkwardness of the couple behind her, at least for the moment. She blinks once at Dytha's greeting, but doesn't seem the least bit offended by her tone. "Something wrong?" she offers, averting her eyes to make the question less obtrusive.
Earwulfa orders mead and downs it one go.
Dytha whirled around and hooked her elbow on the bar, planting herself so she wouldn't at once begin pacing the room. She muzzled herself with her mug for three long sips. Pale brows were bent as an armed crossbow.
Syaven sighs very quietly, with a look as though she had just spoken to herself. She sets her hands on her lap, pushing up as she stands once more. "Well," she begins, trying a new voice with more cheer and some echo of their previous jest returning. "Does your heart hide at the bottom of that mead? I'll fill it again, if that would ease your mind."
Langhund felt a grin tug at his lips once more, and with an unsteady head he nodded his agreement as he held the mug out for a moment, and soon enough his head was already swooping again as the mead overtook his mind.
Brynleigh rubs her lips together thoughtfully, studying Dytha in her silence. Rather than press the woman, she looks for her own drink, and finds it near at hand. Snagging the handle of the tankard, she hoists it up and then wanders on quiet little feet to find a place to park herself.
Dytha |For the best. Dytha didn't trust her own tongue to do more than lap up her bitter mead as she glowered into the tavern.
Syaven takes his mug by the handle, and stoops to retrieve her own, freeing him at last from her relentless and interrogating stare. She drifts over to the counter where the heavy cask of mead waits unattended for the moment, a few golden drips escaping the spout.
Dytha |Sy might find herself, freed from Hund's stare, snagged in another. Dytha's lips were pressed thin as she watched the woman, a silver-ringed finger tapping at her mug.
Langhund watched her go for a moment, until his head turned back again and he felt a bubbling in his chest as laughter escaped from his lips, and his palm was quick to tap at his forehead.
Earwulfa orders another mug of mead and now takes a modest sip. Earwulfa walks towards the fireplace and picks up a fiddle.
Syaven catches the weight of eyes on her from along the counter near the door. She grins with warm, if somewhat distracted courtesy to Dytha, and the angle of her glance drops slightly to check that her mug was sufficiently filled before she began to pour her own.
Dytha raised her cup, but then realized the silence. Why should she be its ally? "A fine night!" she called out, pushing her elbow off the bar to find footing nearer the room's center. Her mug went to the bardess. "Fine music!" And then it swept to the few left this late evening. "And, one would presume, fine company."
Syaven turns, and raises her cup shoulder-high in return, beaming at the new voice and its bearer, and the stirring life in the tavern that followed her words. "Fine company," she echoed, without making much effort to be heard.
Earwulfa react to the cry near bar and responds, 'Hail Eorlingas!'
Langhund tilts his head back against the bench and raises an empty hand up in cheers and agreement to the statement, a tipsy grin on his lips and a chuckle soon escaping.
Halasfath steps up to the bar and orders a pint.
Dytha 's ill temper turned. Her brows eased flat while her smile curved sharply. She downed her mead and spun to fill it again. She must catch up to her own merry-making. "Very fine." She caught Syaven's eye, tilted her head towards Hund, and winked.
Halasfath takes his drink and places some coins on the bar.
Syaven smiled openly at the woman who'd roused the tavern, and nodded low to her as she began to leave the bar, keeping her stance welcoming, and willing to accept any company around. She reached down to the table where Hund's empty hand waited, returning with a mug brimming full for him, and placing it on the wood between several emptied others abandoned nearby.
Dytha marched to the bench and lowered a hand to rest on Langhund's shoulder. "Is this how you merry-make, my friend? By falling asleep with your nurse by your bedside?"
Langhund took hold of his mead in one of his hands, and as he took a sip a hand placed on his shoulder, despite how gentle it would be it was still enoough to make it splash down his front. After a couple of gulps, he tilted his head back with a drunken grin. "How I merry make is never suitable for a tavern, unless it is when everyone is asleep."
Syaven laughed freely for the first time that evening, her eyes sparkling at the woman, and smiling back as Hund replied.
Halasfath takes a drink and looks around the room. he realizes that his sister is not here and he knows no one here
Earwulfa hears the conversation behind her (although the man's words are hard to follow) and raises an eyebrow
Dytha scanned the room over his head, her hand un-routed from its perch atop his shoulder. "Seems to me everyone is already asleep." She looked down, wisps of her hair the windy ride had split from her braid framing a wolfish grin. "Or are you more bark than bite?"
Langhund took another long drink from his mead, casting a glance to Syaven and then to Dytha as he pondered his thoughts, "The last time I did /my/ merry making with two women awake, I could not walk well for a while.. and those two couldn't for months!" He grinned and laughed again, the merry laughter almost musical as it filled the inn.
Syaven did not laugh, though her red cheeks and smiled filled with more cheer and warmth at the rate her cup was emptying. She reached a beckoning hand in gesture to the woman by the bench, silently inviting her along, and then moved to take a seat again, her face darkening as she turned her back to the glow of the hearth.
Dytha stepped back, her hand still on his shoulder, opening up a serious look to Syaven for the first time, but behind the stretch of Hund's neck to catch. It was a look women everywhere shared—did she want to stay, or was this man more trouble than staying was worth? She wouldn't join the circle without an answer.
Syaven | Without matching the gravity of the woman's glance, Syaven tossed her eyes in a gentle roll as her only answer. She turned to the table, and invaded the space surrounding the halfblood without any trace of hesitation.
Langhund took a long drink from his mead again, setting his mead on the table as he stretched his legs out infront of him, unaware to the situation around him and perhaps seeming all the more happier because of it.
Dytha rounded the bench with a quick nod. She slowed down her sips, all the same. "Is that such a thing to boast?" she asked, falling into a chair and kicking a boot up on the edge of the table.
Langhund says, 'Back when I was serving my days in Stangard, a boast of two women could easily get you three!'
Dytha tilted a scrutinous eye on the man's mead-soaked tunic and beard. "True. I suppose if two women can get you drunk enough to steal your purse and horse out from under you, it'd be easy work for three."
Syaven ignored Hund for the moment, and eyed the woman's gestures and movements, filled enough with drink to tread beyond courtesy, into over-generous glances. She smiled at her foot, and nearly nodded in approval before taking another drink.
Langhund felt another grin tug at his mouth and this time his head slumped forward, his chin on his chest until his laughter pushed it back to where it normally rested, "Then it is a good thing I no longer use any coins!"
Dytha smile had settled in for the long hearthside evening. "Then in what do you trade? Not favors. The best favor you can offer a woman is to leave her to her own business. What else?"
Langhund says, 'Whatever whoever I deal with wants. Not long ago I helped an elderly man and his wife do the work on his farm for no payment. And even shorter than that, I offered my sword to a trade caravan in return for a bit of chain. It all depends on the sweetness of my heart!'
Dytha turned her bright gaze on Syaven. "And what do you offer this fair maid?"
Syaven says, 'The sweetness is all in your tongue, Hund. You do not fool us all.'
Langhund says, 'Whatever she would ever wish from me, I will give to her! And the sweetness of my tongue is just a bit of the sweetness that is deep inside of me. Like a bee hive in the darkest woodland of Pren Gwydh. The outside may appear unsavoury, and that it may leave you hurting, though move past such there is a sweetness that will fill even the largest stomachs and the sweetest of teeth.'
Dytha leaned back in her chair, gently testing its strength by pushing its front legs off the floor. "Edoras is a good hive for you, then. A golden hall for a golden tongue."
Langhund says, 'Yet the wildest bees make the sweetest honeys, and that is why I am a man of the wilds, not a man of the golden hall.'
Syaven laughs, almost forgetting her tankard, and steadying it on her lap just before it spills. "Is that why? Is it nothing to do with the pains you've earned from your careless stinging?"
Langhund says, 'Just like any bee dies after stinging, so do I after every careless one! It is only now where a more calm fire settled within me.'
Dytha chuckled. "You seem more inclined to reap honey than produce it."
Langhund raised his shoulders in a shrug as he stretched out on the bench, drinking from his mead, "Mead loses its sweetness eventually."
Dytha lifted her cup to regard it as if it were precious garnet in the firelight. "Only when you have too much of it."
Langhund says, 'Yet not even the mead of the Hills is as sweet as the women in this hall!'
Dytha |The chair's front feet landed on the floor with a thud. "I will need more myself to sweeten the swallowing of such words." She stood and moved too quickly for blurred eyes, marching to the counter to refill her cup.
Langhund followed Dytha with his gaze, until they turned back to Syaven with a grin at his lips as a red brow raised and he drank from his mug.
Dytha returned with a third cup, but she didn't yet take her seat. Leaning against the post she hooked one boot over the other. Her mug in the crook of her arm, she at last pulled her gloves off a finger at a time. "So, Hunig," she named the man. Was it Hound mispronounced or her own device? "What does this fair maid offer you in return for wild honeyed words?"
Syaven fled her eyes from across the table as Hund's fell slowly across it to her. She tilted her head to stretch a weariness out of her neck, and spent a moment grinning away from the two, though her ears and attention remained on them without question.
Langhund looked towards Dytha then eventually and he pondered for a moment, leaning forward in the chair. "She gives me her fair beauty to look at on a rainy day as it is today. Like gold in the river bed, a jewel in the ashes of a fire, or a star in a cloudy night."
Dytha tossed her gloves on the bench beside him. She regarded Syaven, imagining the smirk on her she could not see. "Each a thing out of reach."
Syaven smiles and returns her eyes to glint at the woman, and Hund in turn. "And gold, jewels and stars have far less interest in you than you have in them."
Langhund grins as he looks to the ceiling of the tavern for a moment, "Well. Those are the things suitable for two maidens.." He laughed again and drank from his mead, and said no more on his comparisons.
Halasfath walks up to that counter and orders a pint, placing a few coins on the counter
Halasfath takes a drink.
Halasfath walks around, looking for a place to sit.
Halasfath smiles at the group sitting near by
Dytha watched him, abiding the temptation to continue with metaphors. She was not the bard in her family, but there were no others present. "My brother would make a study of you, I bet," she teased even as her gaze roamed to Syaven. "And of you..." she chuckled, shook her head, and took a sip.
Syaven laughed with her mouth full of mead, and swallowed quickly to reply. "Ah! But be sure he would not make a student of him, or I fear his poor fate."
Langhund drank deeply from his mead and he pondered, looking around as he spoke out, "Hm.. yn unig os maen e'n gallu'n siarad iaith y mynyddoedd. (Hm. Only if he can speak the language of the mountains.)
Syaven rises from her chair with hardly a sound, and takes a step back to escape the cloud of the halfblood's words, an unwelcome guest lingering in the air. She sets her mug down on the table before her.
Dytha 's eyebrows drifted up. "Oh, his fate will not be poor, I assure you." She shook her head. "I am sure it is full of its own gold, jewels, and stars." Her mug raised to her mouth but stopped halfway when she heard the language like a shift in wind. Her gaze drifted slowly to the man and bore more into him than her previous perusal. She might make out the outline of an iron torc under the kindling of his beard. "And that tongue, honeyed or not...what are you willing to trade for that?" The last word joined the motion of her free hand, pointing at the man.
Langhund took a moment to look between the two and he could visibly be seen biting his tongue as his lips parted and he simply raised his mead in silence and drank it down deeply, enough to finish it off and set it to the side with a whisper to himself, his eyes closing for a moment as it rushed to his head.
Syaven says, 'Not my life nor honour, at least. I do not plan to be around when an idle blade decides to take aim at it.'
Langhund says, 'Then you'd best seal my lips before it happens.'
Langhund felt another grin tug at his lips as he looked to her.
Syaven grinned with narrowed eyes, and with feigned courtesy she bowed. "Or simply take my leave, perhaps."
Langhund felt a chuckle escape from his lips. "It'd be better for us both. If we left together, for the same place."
Dytha |"Maybe the blade needs not be idle." She slipped in front of and into her chair in one motion. Her gaze stayed on Langhund like a captain's on the shore. "You have a gift for speech, as is clear. These tavern-goers seem to want only your scraps. What if the same skill were worth more, elsewhere? What if west you could afford again to trade in coin?"
Langhund turned his gaze to Dytha then with a raised brow and let a few moments silence hang between them, until he raised the mug for her to explain more.
Syaven laughed gently as she turned and rounded behind the chair. "That is a doom for my shadow to endure in your dreams, I think." She stopped to hear the woman's words, and was held by the tone of them.
Dytha paused, listening for the beats of hidden boots and exactly where Syaven had stopped behind her. There was no one else but them three. "I am Dytha, Oathsworn..." Another pause. A chance to title herself as granddaughter of Reeve of West-March, the man who held the Isen for the King. She continued past it. "I have coin and more to give for those who seek a cause to serve. Your tongue...it is more valuable to me than the finest armour, sword, and shield. The ability to speak the Hillmen tongue..." She adjusted her grip on the mug, knuckles pink, to white, and pink again. "You would be more than welcomed. You would be praised."
Langhund reached a hand up to brush through his beard, and he leaned back in the bench, sending a half-smug grin towards Syaven as he flicked his tongue out towards her, before looking to Dytha again. "And what would I get? Other than coin."
Syaven raised her brow in a sudden surprise unseen behind Dytha, but locked now on Hund.
Dytha opened the one hand not nestling her mead. "What do you want?"
Langhund looked towards Syaven for a few moments in silence, before he looked to Dytha again with another smile tugging at his lips. "There are many things that I want. Coin? No. Armour? I do not wear it. If I chose what I wanted, then I will choose the finest mead hall in all of the land to call my own. So you should tell me what you are to give."
Dytha grinned, appraising more than the boldness of his question. "If I had the finest mead hall in all the land, I would have no reason to trade for your honeyed tongue. Land, though...land I can spare. Land I can offer, and you may build whatever hall you want on it."
Langhund pondered the thought for a few moments until he stood upright with a grin, "We will see. Though it is hard to buy the tongue of a man who takes no interest in bought things. For now though, I think it is time for me to rest my head, a long hunt is in the morning for me!"
Syaven shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her gaze completely struck, and unable to match the playfulness in Hund's.
Dytha stood, leaving the mug on the table with the mud from her boots. "I said trade, not buy. You will have it back, unless you lend it to someone who has less care for it than I."
Langhund says, 'I think the one who looks after my tongue even better than I is the fair maiden to your side. She has warned me many times where to speak which language.'
Dytha turned to the woman, regarding her with the same calmness and candour as she would any lord. "Well, Syaven? Are you willing to barter with me for use of his tongue?"
Langhund once again flicks his tongue out with a wiggle and a grin, resting his arms on the back of a chair.
Syaven says, 'I cannot remember anyone offering to trade for it. When his morning eyes are empty of mead, your offer might look like a prize indeed.'
Dytha nodded. "Then I will wait for the morning." She leaned over the chair-back to swipe up her mead. Though it was mostly drunk she raised the cup to them both. "To fine company."
Langhund raised up an empty hand with a grin, "Nos da ac iechyd da!" He smiled to them both and gave a wink before he moved over to to a part of unoccupied flooring closest to the fire, stretching out and bunching his furs underneath his head, his eyes soon clothing as he drifted off.
Syaven says, 'Fine company. Goodnight, Dytha. May you rest well.'
Chat Log: 08/09
