Welcome to Gaia! ::

Sortha looked around it was for the most part dead so she got up and walked outside. She sat down on the grass and just looked around.

Sortha saw the new people come and was wondering who they where so she fallowed them in and sat at a table.

Visitors have come and gone; staff has been fired, hired, and rehired. The old owner has died in a tragic accident involving a falling tree.

The inn has lain empty for nearly a month. In that month, the forest seems to have taken over; the trees grow taller, overshadowing the small buildings. Fae play in the yard, tricking the human eye. Inside the rooms fill with dust and there is an abandoned feeling.

But it is still the only inn on this long, dark road. It is the only shelter in a place where people desperate need shelter.

The knocks assumed the sensation of being repeatedly hit on the head with a wooden bat, but when Jerinn flailed a hand clumsily above his head to fend off the attacker, sleep began to rescind from his overtired mind and he recognised the sound for what it really was.

There was no light in the inn, but Jerinn's feral species had good night vision by default. Not good enough to see through doors, though. Unfortunate. He blinked at the closed portal, sleep and the general gloom dulling the usually bright hue of his green eyes, as though waiting for it to open.

After a moment, he wondered if he should get up and open it. Then he immediately wondered why he should bother. Scratching wearily at his messy, shapeless auburn hair, and inadvertely ridding it off the dust it had managed to collect from its contact with the floorboards, Jerinn decided against it. If they wanted in, all they had to do was open the door - that was what he'd done.

He shifted nonetheless from his awkward position slumped against the floorboards and attempted to disentangle himself from the sheet he'd found draped over the abandoned furniture. The inn wasn't much, but it was better than a) nothing at all and b) nothing at all in the rainstorms that had hit the area, and subsequently him, as he'd been passing through several days ago.

There was always a risk that the people knocking were the people he was trying very hard to avoid. But somehow, he didn't think they'd bother to knock, either. Jerinn clambered stiffly to his bare feet, still caked with dry mud from the rainstorms, and wrapped the sheet around his equally bare chest with a shudder.

"Um," he croaked at the door, blinking briefly down at his vague outline in the dust on the floorboards he'd been occupying. "The door's open. It pushes inwards, in case you were wondering."

Shielding his eyes from the sudden flare of illumination with one raised arm, Jerinn took a step back from the door as it opened, the large sheet clasped around him having hidden his instinctive reaction to reach for the knife in the sheath strapped to his thigh.

If the inn didn't have much to show for itself, neither did its temporary inhabitant. Jerinn was short by most standards, and had only a worn pair of trousers and a belt holding them up to his name - though he damn well planned to take the sheet with him. No one else apparently wanted it.

His skin was naturally tanned and his high cheekbones and narrow eyes and face betrayed his feral ethnicity almost as much as his canine-filled flash of white teeth did. But despite the animalistic tension to his stance and posture, he looked mostly human, if a little unconventional for one.

As they grew used to the light, Jerinn's keen jade eyes closely followed the newcomers' movements, his vaguely amused grin fixed on the nervous-looking female.

"Yeah, looks like it's been abandoned for a while. Still, I wasn't gonna complain about staying at an inn I didn't need to pay for. Beggars can't be choosers, y'know?"

"A fae?"

Jerinn's grin widened, and he absently scratched at one ever-so-slightly pointed ear with a clawed fingernail, accompanying the echoed question with a wide yawn.

"No, not a fae, though I get the feeling I should maybe take that as some kind of compliment." He wrinkled his nose, the expression almost child-like. "Depending on who, and where, you ask, I might be . . . a mongrel, or a mangy mongrel, or a dirty cur, or, this one was good, a vagrant smelly wretched beast - women, eh? A way with words, they've got. It's charming, really."

He inhaled a deep breath, and exhaled it slowly in ambiguous reminiscence.

"However, if you'd just like to know my name . . . it's Jerinn. You guys are looking . . . well-travelled. What you doin' here?"

"Funnily enough, I agree on that point."

Jerinn tilted his head, a faint grin still dominating his face. He found the hiding girl somehow amusing, and her requirements even more so; removing a hand from beneath the sheet, he scratched absently at his ear.

"Food's a no-go, I already checked out the storerooms and kitchens and what's left is rotten." He wrinkled his nose in disgusted remembrance of the smell. "Lucky for you, I did go out yesterday and bag myself lunch. I'm sure I'll be able to catch something else later - in fact, I intend to. Belly's rumbling as we speak. Water still seems to be running though, the well's clearly still sound."

Lifting a hand, Jerinn pointed towards the back of the inn, where the actual rooms appeared to be, sheathed in flickering shadows cast by the lantern. "If there are any baths left, you'll have to go look for 'em. They weren't exactly high on my agenda when I got here."