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 Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 9:32 pm
Rules of the Road
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An encounter between Reynard Irving (Snifit) and Artemis Kalends (Saint-Cinq) with guest appearances from a mischievous magpie and a sturdy satchel.
When & Where: A winter’s day in the eastern plains of southern Imisus, relatively near the cities of Montberg and Persea.
---
Reynard Irving was cold. This was, regrettably, not a new experience for him as of late. Most people, living in relatively stable situations, know what it’s like to feel momentarily cold. It is an inconvenience, at best, a little something to quicken one’s steps until they are back inside the relative warmth and safety of their home. Reynard existed in a state of cold, was dominated and permeated by it. He was flabbergasted to wake one morning and realize he wasn’t even sure he remembered what real, bone-deep warmth felt like.
He thought to himself, This is absurd. I have not even been traveling for very long. Once he’d passed through the next town and re-acquainted himself with the current date (which he was embarrassed to have lost track of in the first place), he realized that it had in fact been nearly two weeks since he’d panicked and left the familiar confines of his office for… this, for endless fields, not nearly enough food, and a world of cold.
He could scarcely believe it; how had he survived nearly two weeks? When he thought about it, it seemed like he hadn’t so much lasted an entire two weeks as he had simply survived a handful of days, one at a time, that had somehow added up to two weeks in the end. Some days he’d been able to get food, and some days he hadn’t. He had been lucky early in his journey, in that he had come across a traveling caravan making its way steadily south, following one of the main roads to the port of Persea. He had decided to make that his eventual destination, and until then, he was doing what he could to hit every small town along the way.
The drivers of the caravan had seemed leery of him at first, but when it became apparent that he was a genuinely harmless creature, they’d taken pity on him and let him tag along. They clearly didn’t have much, but they shared what they did with him. Reynard had been torn between surprise and bafflement at such charity, but he had accepted, driven by the raw, visceral power of sheer hunger. There had been nothing he could do to help them in return, aside from tell them, softly, “Thank you,” and remember.
He supposed that would have to do. He would remember, and if he ever saw them again, he would do something about it, should he be in such a position.
In the small towns he had managed to scrape by with a bit of work, menial tasks that needed doing (and once someone had given him a shilling just to go away, and he had not been too proud to accept it) but he never lingered. One settlement had actually turned him away, claiming that they had placed themselves in quarantine; startled, but not afraid (he was not afraid, not if he refused to admit it to himself; he would not let fear dominate him, never again), Reynard had skirted the fringes of that town and had not stopped traveling until it was very, very late and he was simply too exhausted to move any longer. It had not been an easy two weeks, but he had survived somehow. He reflected on this as he made his way down yet another stretch of road. He was cold, and his feet hurt, and he was fairly certain that his battered shoes were slowly disintegrating with each step, but at least he was alive. He’d never been thankful just to be alive before. He was puzzled by the sensation, and curiously enough, almost exhilarated by it.
A shadow passed overhead. Reynard glanced up to see the silhouette of a long-tailed bird outlined against the clear sky.
The strangest part was not that he had made it, though. The strangest part was that the magpie was still following him. It did not always stick very near, and had disappeared once for an entire day (he had been sure that it was gone, only to see it hopping around him when he woke in the morning), but it was unmistakably following him. Its bold nature had amused the members of the traveling caravan, and once it had even brought Reynard an old, somewhat tarnished silver ring. The magpie had strutted about with this proudly until it had lost interest (Reynard found that the quickest way to make the bird lose interest in whatever was currently occupying said interest was to either wait two minutes or to offer it food), after which the former clerk was free to pick up the discarded thing and inspect it. Reynard had taken the ring to town and managed to trade it for a handful of coins, which he’d then promptly traded for more food. He had been sure to spare the magpie a tidbit.
It had been a stroke of outrageous good fortune, but the last of that food was gone now. He hadn’t eaten since the day before. He did not know how to find sustenance in the blasted winter landscape, but had been told on his last stop that there was a town that he should be reaching by dusk, so perhaps he would eat that evening The sun was out, but it was doing little more than shedding a bit of wan light on the rather bleak landscape. Reynard cut a somewhat sad and curious figure on the side of the road: a disheveled man in a tattered coat, wearing what looked like had once been the remains of reasonably respectable garb, topped off by a pair of cracked spectacles. He had sunk lower than he could ever remember before in his (admittedly somewhat short) life, but, dammit, he was alive, and that was something.
The magpie slid across the sky, riding a current of wind he couldn’t see, and wheeled away. It would be back, he knew. The bird always came back.
He was alive, and he was not alone.
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Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 8:45 pm
Artemis Kalends frowned and looked at the map again. He was positive that he should see at least the treeline by now.
He had purchased the map, along with some other supplies of flint and tinder, a warmer cloak that doubled as a bed roll, extra dagger, bread, and waterskin while he had been in Chestering, which, he considered as he looked back on it, had been a travail in itself. A military base, Chestering had been where he had woken up after being "returned" via teleportation from the Emperor's audience. Kalends, though, being a thief, had anticipated that he would not find a warm welcome waiting for him when his escort discovered his occupation, and so had opted to make the long journey back to Edgecrest on his own.
While it beat being arrested or dead, wandering along lonely roads with miles of fields as his only company wasn't high on the list of Kalends' favorite activities. He had been born and lived almost all of his life in Edgecrest, except to occasionally take refuse in a village when he drew too much attention to himself, and certainly had never been this far from his home. Even more perplexing than the circumstances that had gotten him there--a strange meeting of people bearing plagues across the Empire that Kalends had mistakenly been included in-- was the fact that the map he'd been using assured the thief that he should be in the middle of a dense forest right now rather than frozen winter fields.
Kalends put the map down and stood with his hands on his hips, looking left and right. Hell, this didn't make sense.
He knew Edgecrest like the back of his hand. If he were placed blindfolded in any alleyway there, Kalends could find his way without a second glance-- his mentor had prepared him with this very exercise. But out here, well... all the roads seemed to look alike.
The thief was nothing if not cautious. His legs, though trained for running, had not been prepared for the kind of endurance that this journey demanded of him and he was growing tired. Artemis Kalends knew very well that if he could not depend on himself then he was nothing, but he was also not willing to march himself to exhaustion. He would stop soon, either at a village and see what he could barter for dinner, or off the road and see what those fields could offer him for food. He'd already caught a few rabbits since setting out, and he had to admit that they were much better fare than the rats that he had caught and eaten in his destitute early youth.
Still, there remained the matter of the map. Reasoning that only a truly foolish person trusted themselves without question, Kalends decided at length to seek confirmation and mollified his pride with the idea that he would merely ask for a short cut to the port city.
Soon enough, he saw the figure of a man in a much-abused coat walking in the opposite direction along the dirt path. Kalends nodded appreciatively to himself. Maybe this man could point him to where the forests started or tell him what was the fastest route to the ocean, either way the right direction of his city. After all, Kalends noted, the man wasn't dressed very warmly, so he figured that he must live close by--though there were very few houses, only a foolhardy soul would be out otherwise in this chill. Maybe they could even come to an arrangement for Kalends to sleep in his farmhouse in exchange for some shillings.
So he lowered the hood of his cloak and waved an arm in salutation when the man was close enough to be hear him. He was careful to keep his manner calm and not threatening; after all, it was not unusual for travelers to meet bandits on the road, and while Kalends wouldn't be adverse to a bit of thievery, he did want to get information out of the man first without alienating him. "Sir, good evening." Kalends inclined his head respectfully. "It's getting dark and I have walked a long way-- could you tell this weary traveler how far from the ocean he is?"
He didn't expect the man to give him an exact number, but if the man was traveling along the road to Prybridge, the closest port city to Edgecrest, then it wouldn't be unreasonable for Kalends to expect him to come up with a rough estimate in days. The thief smiled. Edgecrest had its seedier side, and there were quite a few people there who would be glad never to see him again, but after days on the road and almost having his satchel taken from him, it would be nice to get home.
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Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 6:51 pm
Reynard had spotted Kalends from a distance, and approached the other without varying his pace. The young man before him seemed to be lost in thought. Had Reynard been more conscious of social cues, it might have occurred to him that a man just standing in the middle of the road was not necessarily a normal thing, and he might have gotten suspicious or at least curious, but the subtleties of the situation slipped by, leaving only the bare facts, and he wasn't particularly interested in a young man just standing around doing nothing.
And then, much to his surprise, this man started to speak to him. Reynard drew to an abrupt halt, focusing his full attention on Kalends for the first time. His expression was blank, neutral, but his eyes were flicking over Kalends in small, jerky motions, obviously taking him in. He was not assessing a threat, but rather just regarding Kalends the way he regarded everyone when meeting them for the first time: in a rather dry, detached fashion, absorbing details about them as if he were looking at an object of interest rather than a person. Only once he had given Kalends the once-over did he look the other in the eye.
He certainly looked less battered than Reynard felt, but that was the only conclusion that Reynard came away from his initial observation with. After a pause that was perhaps a few moments longer than was strictly polite, Reynard finally replied, “Good evening.” Though very tall, he was not an impressively-built man, and his voice was surprisingly deep for one so thin and frail-looking. He also had a very faint accent that would have been difficult to place for anyone unfamiliar with the loose vowels and soft consonants of St. Cobb's regional dialect. He paused a moment to give the man’s question due consideration, “A few day’s travel, if you head straight east.”
He stared at Kalends for a few more moments, his face still curiously blank, offering no smile, no scowl, absolutely nothing to the other. It was likely mildly unsettling. “We are not far from Montburg, I do not think.”
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 5:57 am
Kalends tried not to crack a smile as the man took inventory of his clothing and state. He was already fairly sure that Reynard would not discern his true profession from his dark cloak and well-worn boots, but the thrill of passing as something else other than what he was-- a cat burglar scaling roofs and liberating challenging targets from their owners by night-- always got to him a little. It was another mark of being good at his work in concealment, and while it was not exactly difficult to look like a traveler, so varied were the dress and mannerisms of such a class, Kalends was nonetheless smugly pleased about his work.
However, that would be the last instance that he felt pleased for quite some time.
"Montburg?" His eyebrows shot up. Kalends struggled to keep his face a mask of calm, but was doing a very bad job. East to the ocean, sure, that made sense, but if what this man was saying was true, then... he checked the map furtively again, his knuckles clasping around it starting to turn white. No. All his hard work, all the effort that he had put into pushing himself onward, urging himself to keep moving so that he could get back home-- all of that would have been wasted if that were so. In fact, from what this man was saying, he could have even been getting further away from his destination. All this told to him by a man whose face was as impassive as the inked surface of Kalends' map.
Kalends was glowering now. As the realization of where they were sunk in, he found it harder and harder to keep his persona of a jovial fellow traveler along the road. Though composure normally came easily to him and life on the road was not something that he dreaded, the insinuation that he, Artemis Kalends, thief of Edgecrest's precious treasures, had done something wrong, something that could not even begin to be passed off as a smart move, was galling. Added to this fact that Reynard presented these facts so calmly, Kalends was near his breaking point.
When he spoke again, his voice was low and his eyes narrowed, quite a different tone and posture from the welcoming presence that he had tried to cut moments before. "How sure are you? Because if you are lying, or making a feeble attempt at humor," Kalends' smile cut his lips upward, revealing teeth sharp and gleaming as a dagger blade as he took a step forward, "I swear I will make you regret every word of it."
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 9:01 pm
Reynard’s knee-jerk reaction to Kalends stepping towards him was to take a step back. Reynard disliked physical contact in general, but he was especially averse to the sort of physical contact that involved a fist traveling at rapid velocities towards his face. For a moment a shred of nervousness passed over his normally-impassive features, only to be replaced by vague irritation. His brow knit and he glared at Kalends from over the top of his cracked spectacles. “What?” he snapped, all traces of earlier intimidation gone, “Why would I do that? That is pointless.” He seemed more upset about the fact that Kalends had accused him of doing something silly than he was about the possibility of getting punched by some rough-looking traveler.
Reynard Irving was clearly a man whose priorities were in order. He continued on, the deep cadence of his voice settling smoothly into a pedantic rhythm. “Furthermore, I do not joke. I do not know why you would be so dismayed to find yourself in this region, and frankly it is no business of mine, but that does not change the facts. You are a few days’ walking distance from the eastern coast of Imisus. Where,” he finished, now thoroughly indignant at being accused of such tomfoolery, “did you think you were?”
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Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 4:24 pm
"Dismayed is not the word." Kalends said under his breath. His shoulders lost their feral hunch, and he stretched, trying to convince his weary body to keep walking and to prepare himself mentally for the task to come. If he could summon the power of will to accomplish something, then it would be as good as done. The fact, as the man in the shabby coat had been so good to point out, was that he was still a week from his destination and that he would still have to expend considerable effort getting there. That could not be changed. All that was left was summoning the will.
Kalends shrugged in answer to the man's question. Yeah, like he was going to admit that he'd been lost and have a complete stranger laugh at him. He hadn't become a terror of Edgecrest just so men on lonely roads could have a good chuckle. "What do you think? If you're so keen on facts, then figure it out yourself. Somewhere clearly not here." The last syllable was curled around a sneer. Admitting that he was wrong was not one of Kalends' strong points.
He turned around and began walking back the way he came. Usually Kalends was hesitant to show his back to anyone, but, as Reynard had not moved forward to attack and nor had made a motion to protect himself when Kalends had moved forward, the thief turned without too many qualms. He was intrigued, though. Most men would have raised a hand, or at least commented on Kalends' threat. Reynard, Kalends mused, seemed more concerned with being accused of not telling the truth than fending off an attack.
"You're heading south, right?" Damn, he hated having to ask. Is this even the right direction? Hell if he knew. This stunt would have earned him a slap from his old mentor. Kalends tsked. He knew he should have gotten a compass in Chestering. "Looks like we'll be walking together then."
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Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2012 10:18 pm
Reynard’s plain irritation began to melt back into his customary blankness once Kalends let the accusation drop, and his drawn features relaxed... somewhat. There was a sense of focus about him that had not been there before, a slight narrowing of the eyes and tenseness of the limbs. Before, he had just casually noticed Kalends, had thought of him as just another face on the road, to be passed and done with in a matter of moments. Not he was warier, and he was actively watching the other. One might have expected him to comment on the subtle threat. He did not.
“That would be a foolish thing to do,” he said abruptly, and it would have undoubtedly seemed like a non sequitur to his companion, until he clarified, “to attempt to guess your destination. There are too many possible answers and not enough information regarding such. I do not know why you would expect me to know,” he concluded, somewhat wryly. Despite this rather cutting reply, he obediently fell into step behind Kalends. He didn’t really have much of a choice. It wasn’t as if he was just going to turn back now. He did not draw very close to the other, but he made no move to further himself from the thief's company, either.
Finally, he answered the question that had actually been posed to him. "Yes, I am heading south. Southeast, I should say, to be perfectly exact. Towards Persea.” He glanced skyward briefly. It had become something of a habit by now to periodically check the sky for his feathered companion, but the magpie was still nowhere to be seen. “I would offer to help you find a road to take you somewhere you would like to be, but I am not familiar with this region, except in the vaguest sense.” He was being remarkably forthright with someone he not only did not know, but who had subtly threatened him only moments before. There was not a trace of irony in his voice, either, to suggest he knew his behavior was slightly odd. Reynard seemed to be completely earnest.
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Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 6:17 am
Kalends frowned, almost missing a step when he realized that the man was actually following him. He hadn't expected that.
The thief almost turned on him again. What, was this guy making fun of him? Kalends wasn't used to having his threats ignored like that, however fleeting they might have been. A normal person wouldn't have been so easily deterred like that, unless they were hiding something. But what could this man be hiding? His eyes narrowed. Maybe this traveler was someone from the Thieves' Guild come to exact revenge on him. He thought about it, but it didn't make sense. What assassin would travel a week for a very small chance of meeting their query on the road? And a smaller chance of trying to beat him in one-to-one combat? Any sensible killer would have staked him out in Edgecrest.
The more thought he gave it, the angrier he got at Reynard's simple action. Did this man have other motives or was he just naive? He'd spoken so factually that Kalends couldn't think it was the latter. The thief spaded his hands into his pockets, his cloak trailing out behind him as he walked along. He wasn't sure what to make of it and he hated that. Kalends had insulted Reynard, threatened him with physical violence, and yet here the man was walking with him, even offering to help him get somewhere though Kalends had done nothing to earn his favor. Maybe he was a priest? No, then he would have tried to dissuade Kalends from violence before. Then what...?
He noticed Reynard's peek at the sky and Kalends too looked up out of instinct. Maybe this man could navigate by the sky, but all Kalends could get from it was the hour of the day. It wasn't time to stop yet, but, judging by the position of the sun, maybe time for dinner soon. Kalends was getting hungry, but he ignored it. The fact that he couldn't easily place this man, figure out his motives, was getting on his nerves. He knew he couldn't confront the man directly about it, but maybe he could make him slip up, reveal something.
"How long have you been traveling?" Kalends asked, a hint of coldness curling through his voice. The man looked nowhere near dressed warmly enough for this weather. If he wasn't from the area then either he was a fool or a poor man; even with his added cloak, Kalends was feeling the chill. "Surely you've heard of highwaymen," he jeered sarcastically. "There are all sorts of dangerous people on the road. I'm surprised you haven't run into any that made you wary of new companions, much less offer to help them find their way."
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Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2012 9:10 pm
Had Reynard been aware of Kalends’ suspicions regarding him--even going so far as to surmise he might have been sent by the Thieves’ Guild--he probably would have been amused at how far from the truth such an assumption was. Probably, because at the end of the day Reynard was not a man to whom humor came easily. While Kalends grappled with his racing thoughts, Reynard Irving lowered his gaze to the ground in front of him and settled into the mindless drudgery of simply walking.
It was one foot in front of the other, and you didn’t think about the cold settling deep into your bones, or the dull hunger gnawing away at your insides. You simply walked. If you stopped and dwelled on your discomfort, then you wouldn’t get any closer to alleviating it. There was nothing for it but to carry on. Reynard settled into a half-daze, pushing himself forward by willpower alone and curiously drained from his exchange with his temporary traveling companion. It had been so long since he’d been required to speak to anyone except in the briefest of fashions that it seemed somehow… strange to him now.
He wondered if he should be worried about that.
Then Kalends was talking again, interrupting the lost clerk’s reverie, and Reynard blinked, his mind instantly back on alert, his fatigue-dulled thoughts honing themselves razor-sharp. For a moment he hesitated. He hadn’t exactly fled his hometown under the best of circumstances, but it was highly unlikely that this man had been anywhere near St. Cobb recently, considering where he thought he was. Though the events surrounding his departure still made him highly nervous , there was no harm, Reynard decided, in responding factually to the first question. “Two weeks,” he replied, “and I suppose I have just been lucky.”
After a moment’s further contemplation he added, “Furthermore, I do not have anything to steal. I am sure I would present nothing more to a highwayman than a disappointment.” It would be amusing if it weren’t so frustrating.
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 9:11 pm
"Two weeks?" Kalends spluttered. Either this man had lost all sensitivity to the outside world or he came from a place so far up north that this cold weather didn't bother him. He'd only ever heard of the northern provinces, but they were much farther than two weeks away. Kalends stole a quick look over at Reynard, somehow he didn't think that the man was lying. Even though the thief was desperate to not be fooled by a clever ruse, he was also not blind. A real assassin would have attacked him hundreds of times by now; strange as it was, this man was probably telling the truth.
All of a sudden, Kalends felt very awkward walking with Reynard. He also felt quite a few varieties of stupid, but most of all, he felt something in his gut pinch seeing the man walking like that, without provisions, without a proper coat. This happened in the streets sometimes, when he would see orphan children huddled against buildings, not begging, but just trying to get by on the scraps they could find. In Edgecrest, he couldn't help them without seriously risking damage to his reputation as a thief or being in disguise. But he wasn't in Edgecrest now, and he doubted the man would visit, so...
"What kind of traveler are you?" Kalends snorted derisively. "Traveling two weeks like that, I'm surprised you lasted two days. You must have some kind of deathwish to be out on the roads like this." He scanned the sides of the path they were walking on, trying to look anywhere but at the man he was traveling with. Damn, Kalends grimaced, he was bad at this. A meadow ahead caught his eye and an idea struck him. "Look, you hungry?"
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Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 11:10 am
Reynard did not respond to Kalends’s first question. He didn’t see the merit of repeating himself. That particular tendency was one aspect of human nature that had always baffled him. It would make more sense, in Reynard’s mind, for someone to say something like, “Oh, that is a long time,” or perhaps, “That is not as long as I had originally thought.” But when they just repeated something, they left it up to him to try and figure out what they meant by it. It was something that had happened quite a bit during his tenure as a bank clerk, and most often the words repeated were large sums of money. Under normal circumstances, he might have conveyed his annoyance of this to Kalends, but he was simply too tired today. He just looked over, fixing the other man with a momentary blank stare before turning his attention back to the road.
He was not self-conscious of his rather pathetic state, and wholly unaware of the internal moral struggle Kalends was dealing with as they walked. In fact, he was somewhat surprised to hear the other respond at all, and blinked himself out of his walking-haze when Kalends took it upon himself to once again mock Reynard’s lack of preparedness. The former clerk scowled slightly. “If you must know, it wasn’t as if I had planned for this.” He was still leery of telling Kalends too much, because he still didn’t entirely understand the circumstances surrounding his flight himself. Still, that didn't mean he'd let this mouthy fellow just up and insult him whenever he pleased. “Furthermore, you have no grounds to lecture me on proper methods of travel.”
He probably would have gone on, but the next question halted Reynard’s sharp tongue, halted the cool ticking of his mind, and nearly halted his very steps. There were few things in the world that could cow Reynard when he’d worked himself up into an indignant lecture, but food was the most powerful weapon that could be used against a truly hungry person. His eyes were slightly narrowed in caution, and his shoulders had drawn up slightly, as if he were expecting his sarcastic companion to snatch away the offer any moment. “I am,” he finally replied, meaning to sound cautious, but instead coming out rather sincere. He was hungry, and desperately so.
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Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 5:05 pm
Kalends rolled his eyes as he shrugged out of his cloak. "Yeah, I can tell. You didn't plan for anything. Do you even have flint--" He shook his head, the motion a clear reprimand to himself for even thinking the possibility was plausible. "No, of course you don't."
He frowned and dug through one of his pockets for the flint and tinder he'd purchased in Chestering. He'd used them a couple of times when he'd been unable to reach a town in time to barter or buy his own dinner, and they'd held up well enough. A quick glance around told him that it shouldn't be too difficult to get a fire set up: near the meadow was a small patch of trees, nothing that he could liken to the forests surrounding Edgecrest, but sufficient enough for kindling. Kalends tossed the flint and tinder to Reynard and then, after a thought, offered the man his cloak.
It would make too much noise when he went through the brush for him to hunt effectively anyway. His lighter cloak, the one he usually wore in the city, had been too light to protect him from the cold much but he kept it rolled up and tied to the top of his satchel. Perhaps it would have made more sense to leave the satchel with the man, too, but Kalends did not. If Reynard chose to run off with his cloak and flint and tinder while Kalends was hunting, he wouldn't care too much. In fact, he half-expected it.
It was what he would do, if their positions were reversed. But... Reynard had sounded so damn truthful when he'd affirmed that he was hungry that Kalends didn't have too many qualms either way. Not that he had qualms about anything, the thief reminded himself testily.
"Then here." He stuck his arm out abruptly, looking terribly awkward and completely unaware that he'd been in he process of being reprimanded a moment before, the cloak bundled up on his fist for Reynard. The man looked frozen anyway. Even if he did run, at least he'd stand a better chance with a cloak and the tools to make a fire. "Hold onto this. It'll make too much noise if I wear it through tall grass. You can start a fire, right? Make one before I get back."
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Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2012 2:54 pm
Once again Reynard found himself mildly annoyed with Kalends’ method of speech. Though the thief was really not doing anything unusual (in fact, most people would agree that, between the two of them, Reynard was the one in possession of odd diction), it still seemed to be grating on the clerk’s nerves. Yes, they had established that he had come unprepared. No, he did not need this man to continue to rub his nose in it. It would do absolutely no good to keep addressing the relevant facts. Before he could protest (not the wisest course of action given his situation), Kalends was quite suddenly throwing things at him.
He caught the flint on reflex, and stared blankly at the cloak when it was offered to him. The man was clearly nonplussed at to this new development. He stared at Kalends for a moment, his face ever blank, unreadable, before he finally reached out and slowly took the offered garment. It began to dawn on Reynard that the dynamic of this encounter was shifting a bit. “Very well,” he responded, taking the cloak and slinging it over his shoulder. He did not answer Kalends’s question, but rather merely watched him go.
Reynard did, in fact, know how to make a fire. He might have been used to more civilized settings, but there were some basic skills that were nearly universal in their application, and getting a fire going was one of them. It could get cold in St. Cobb on some nights, and everyone liked a fire in the hearth. When he was younger, it had been one of his nightly duties, but working at the bank had kept Reynard away from his home during the early evening.
He was a bit out of practice, but he would manage. The hardest part was gathering sufficient kindling. There was plenty of dry grass to start off with, but a good, hungry fire needed thick, stout sticks to sustain itself, and those were in short supply out here. Reynard procured some after a brief struggle with a stunted, dying tree a little way down the road (in which he emerged the victor, but knocked off his own spectacles twice). Sometime during the gathering of the wood and the dry grasses, the cloak had made its way to his shoulders. He had not meant to wear it, but had slung it there to prevent it from brushing along the ground as he stooped to gather grass. A series of shrugs, adjustments, and small tugs had ended up with it perched neatly where it should be by the time he had the fire set up.
Kalends would return to a small, but determined blaze, aside which Reynard had stacked a few sticks to add to the fire later. The clerk was crouching by it, his eyes half-hooded in the welcome, relaxing heat it gave off, the cloak half-on his shoulders and bundled in his lap to prevent it from getting dirty. As the grass parted and the thief returned, Reynard looked over to him, eyes wide, sharp, and alert once more. He didn’t say anything. He just watched.
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Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 11:11 am
Kalends stalked off into the overgrown meadow, his black-clad form casting an odd shadow over the greens and browns of the out-of-season field as he set off. He hadn't bothered looking back at Reynard before he left, instead figuring that he would be getting dinner for himself and would come back to an empty stretch of road, devoid of both clerk and his belongings. The fact that the clerk may not run off seemed so impractical to Kalends that the thief did not consider it. The man already seemed to have had enough of him anyway, and Kalends was accustomed to people who didn't like him getting very quickly out of his way.
Besides, the thought of being nice to someone made his lip curl. Kalends wasn't nice; he was ruthless. His fingers twitched along to his dagger hilt as he moved through the field, as though needing to prove that fact via the death of a small woodland mammal.
Kalends surveyed the meadow and crouched down low, not moving as his eyes roved through the edge of the grass and the start of a small brush of trees. He waited there for sometime, staying still in the shadows of a bush, until he saw movement begin to pick up again. Animals hurried about their winter business, thinking it was safe again now that the movement had stopped, that they could move without fear. Kalends let them. He watched a few squirrels pass by (squirrel meat was not his favorite) and waited still. He wasn't particularly rushed, thinking that since no one was waiting for him he could take his time. A doe poked her head out of the forest and Kalends considered making her his target, then decided not to (not out of a sentimental feeling, but more that she would have more meat on her than he or his companion could eat).
Then, at last, a rabbit came along. Kalends' dagger was a streak of blue metal cutting through the air before the rabbit's heart even had a chance to speed up out of fear. He collected the creature-- the meadow had again gone still-- and cleaned his blade off on the almost frozen grass.
Returning to the road with rabbit in hand, Kalends was surprised to see that the clerk was still there and had made a fire for him as requested. Kalends sat down, dagger still drawn, and began to skin and clean the rabbit and whittle a spare piece of kindle into a spit for the meat. Damn, he wasn't used to this. He concentrated on preparing the rabbit until he could think of something to say.
"I hope this isn't too rough for your sensibilities." Kalends grunted as he forced the skinned body into the spit without an ounce of disgust at how bloody his hands and dagger had become. His eyes flicked over to Reynard, his tone perhaps less pugnacious than it had been before. "Though I'd be lying if I said I'd thought you'd stick around."
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Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 9:44 pm
Reynard didn’t fall asleep, but it couldn’t be said that he stayed entirely awake as he waited for Kalends to return. Eventually squatting in such an awkward position made his legs sore and he folded them up underneath him, sitting with his knees bent and his bottom resting on his heels. He drew the cloak tighter around him and blinked dazedly at the blaze, letting his mind drift in a grey fog of exhaustion. The irregular flickering of the small but healthy fire was oddly mesmerizing.
On any other occasion, left with nothing to do, Reynard’s thoughts probably would have wandered in a productive direction. He might have tried to plot out his next move, or considered the many obstacles standing between him and his destination, or perhaps even puzzled over what exactly he was going to do when he arrives in Persea to feed himself. Nothing of the sort happened. He was too tired to think… or at least to think of anything that involved such a demanding amount of cogitation. Things that would normally have slid smoothly through the ticking clockwork of the former clerk’s mind got gummed in in cogs that refused to move. Hunger, he mused wearily to himself, the great leveler.
When Kalends returned, Reynard blinked back into full awareness, saying nothing, but merely watching. As soon as he noticed the rabbit his eyes were on it, and they stayed on it, even while Kalends went about the unsavory task of skinning and gutting the unfortunate creature. Reynard was not disgusted. He was hungry. He had never thought the smell of blood would ever strike him as anything approaching palatable, but so it was, and he watched the entire process with razor-edged intensity… until Kalends spoke.
Reynard blinked, snapping himself out of a daze for yet another time in the presence of this fellow (really, Reynard would be surprised if Kalends didn’t think him slow by then). “No. I have cleaned fish before.” The process by which fish were prepared for a meal was quite less messy, but it didn’t change the fact that Reynard had been wrist-deep in guts before. That wasn’t to say he liked it, but he could put up with it. “And at any rate, what makes you think I have delicate sensibilities? Or delicate anything, for that matter?” he asked with an affronted air. Reynard had never been called delicate before in his life in any sense of the word. He took exception to it (regardless of the fact that it was more or less an accurate description of many of Reynard‘s attributes).
He calmed somewhat at the thief’s next words. For a long moment Reynard said nothing, but looked away, fixing his gaze on the fire, which reflected from his spectacles: one whole disc of smooth glass, and one cracked circular lens. “In that instance,” he replied, a touch more softly and a little less fussily, “thank you for leaving me with your cloak.”
He paused again, cocking his head and opening his mouth to say something else, but he was very rudely interrupted by a feathered missile dropping from the sky.
The magpie crashed into the ground, skidding along the dusty road in a wild flapping tangle of black-and-white feathers, before it righted itself with startling abruptness and folded its wings over its back. It tilted its head to view the two humans with its single remaining eye and strutted with great dignity about the perimeter of the camp, not quite entering, but not leaving, either. After it had given the two humans the once-over, it turned its attention to the discarded rabbit offal.
Reynard grabbed one of the nearby sticks and flicked some unidentifiable, squishy rabbit bit towards the bird, which happily set to work stabbing away with its beak, tossing its head back with the practiced ease of a born carrion-eater. He did not say anything or explain his avian companion in any way to Kalends. He just went on, rather casually, as if nothing had happened. “Not, of course, that I intend to keep it.”
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