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If Petra makes appearances in the kitchens with any regularity, one day she will walk in -- with typical Petra-esque self-confidence -- to find someone new there. It is a face she has seen once or twice before, in a strange and otherworldly meeting out in some farmer's wheat fields -- if she stops to think about it, this is the same young man whose parents she so blithely asked about. It is lucky for Petra that Ayle both forgave her then, and has forgotten about it since.

He is sitting in the ruddy glow of the kitchen fire, on a seat much too low for his frame, so that one long leg is sprawled out, and one knee is up somewhere around his chest. On further inspection the seat is a bucket. He holds a heel of bread in one hand, and a mug in the other; the heel of bread has been stuffed with orange cheese and what looks to be roast beef. The brown gravy has soaked into the bread; as she walks in, he tears another bite off of it with a wolfish motion. One expects him to throw his head back and swallow the bite whole.

The firelight has turned his near-white hair to a buttery blonde and casts red reflections on his skin, but there are not many tall young men who look like this, and -- if one stops to think about it -- this is a place one could expect him to be. In an establishment like the Swan. Though his clothing is a bit nicer, now, and he looks less sunbleached, and he likely smells a jot better.

"Oh," he says, voice familiarly husky, with his enthusiastic twang of an accent, "it's you. Sit down. D'you want some?" Meaning food.

He had been in the middle of another bite -- jaw thrust out to one side, chewing, with a crumb or two stuck to his lower lip -- when he sits back and puts the hunk of bread on the table. His expression is not guarded; it's hard to think of him as having a suspicious, closed-off look. His face isn't one given over to guarded, suspicious expressions. He's too friendly. It's evident when he blinks, surprised; what could Maeve want with him?

He may not be guarded, but he is -- .. "--if this is about that man earlier..."

He grins. The effect is striking. His mouth is full and a bit too large for his face, so his smile literally lights up his face. It could light up a room. "Literally threw him out on his arse after he got a bit handsy."

The man had been furious, had demanded if Ayle had known who he was -- he'd come from a family of bankers, he was a baron! -- and Ayle finds this all the funnier because he really doesn't care. It is a distinctly Colonial trait about him: societal roles mean nothing.

"Don't let her hear you call her 'old.'" He snorts, rises; he picks up the sandwich and rips off one last huge hunk with his teeth in a distinctly wolfish gesture. A moment passes where he chews, his cheeks puffed out like a rat's, before he's able to speak: "What's she want?"

Since the wolves are coming. The Wolves, with a capital W, Ayle thinks. It might be good to have a Guardian to go ranging around with, who could fight with hooves and antlers, but if you get dragged down off of that Guardian, or they find you alone .. you're nothing unless you have some sort of weapon.

He sets his hands on his slim hips, thinks a moment, and then cocks his head down at her; the long tail of his hair goes whispering across his back. "Have you ever used one? Anything like one?"

"Never killed a goat," he says, looking up at the door that leads to the Swan proper. He has finally stopped attracting the attention of most of the girls, except for one blonde one who he sometimes--..

He stills that train of thought as Petra blinks off, and then shakes his head. "Killed a few calves, a pig. They fight. You'll learn." He looks to the table he'd been standing at; there are no knives resting on it, though a few hang on the wall. They're the wrong type, of course, meant for cooking, chopping vegetables and the like. They're not the kind of knife Ayle uses. "Let's go see Maeve and then I'll show you a knife. And how to use it."

He follows gamely enough -- no thought given to why she might precede him through the door. He didn't see the blood rising in her cheeks, doesn't stop to think that as a twelve year old girl she might be developing the first stirrings of a crush.

He just follows.

He grins: his habitual wolfish grin, the one he uses with the girls -- not the one he uses with Maeve. Perhaps it is for Petra's benefit, or because now they talk of something he can do, and do well. Perhaps it is just natural confidence. "I thought it'd be better than teaching her how to use a sword. What were you thinking of?"