Location: The Hermitage
As Lucius sat in the empty tavern common room, with not even the barmaid in attendance, he was lost in his reverie. The quiet room's silence was a void and it seemed to stretch time to a point of breaking. The barkeep remained in his place, bustling about and busily doing nothing.
Suddenly the front door swung open with a resounding thump. "Get off me, you old witch. I don't need your bloody herbs, I need whiskey." Came to a shout from outside, before a woman hobbled through the doorway.
Igrit Foebane halted briefly when her eyes met Lucius', he wasn't exactly what she'd expected and the fact that he was wounded caught her off guard. Her dark, wavy hair bounced as she stopped and then swayed as she turned her head about the dingy place and took in the quiet. She gave Lucius another look, but she felt no need to engage.
One of her long, shapely legs was bandaged from ankle to knee, with their pale cloth standing out against her tanned, dark skin. Her pert lips thinned to a pained grimace as she determinedly hobbled toward the bar and the surprised tavernkeeper. Behind a shuffling old woman, with hair so thick and unwashed it looked more like moss than hair and her wrinkled face was full of indignation and concern. "Igrit! You should still be in bed, you've barely had a chance to heal at all!" She cried, pursuing the younger woman.
"Yeah, yeah. You keep saying that, but if I spent another day in that musty old hut, I think I'd claw my hair out. You should open a window in that place." Igrit replied sardonically without looking at the old woman.
She felt a little guilty about speaking to her that way, but if Falla had her way, Igrit had no doubt she'd be lying on her scratchy bed for the rest of the year. A single night had been enough. She finally reached the bar and groaned her way onto a rickety stool. "Something strong, in a large cup." She grunted at the barman, who chewed his mustache as his eyes flicked between Igrit and Dalla.
The old woman gave an exasperated nod and then leaned on the bar next to Igrit. "You could at least get me one." She muttered.
"Ah. Well, that's true enough. Make that two, barman." Igrit replied before looking at Dalla and holding her gaze. "I don't mean to seem ungrateful, witch. Your help has been useful. But I'm not spending another hour in your house." For Igrit, these might have been considered 'kind words', but Igrit regretted them regardless. She wondered, not for the first time, why she struggled so much in making others feel at ease.
"Well, it's not as if it was a one-way street, girl. You saved me from that thing, so a little bandaging, a poultice, and some prayers to the spirits of the bog were the least I could offer. But if you keep thumping around on that leg, you'll open the wound again." Dalla said as her drink slid in front of her.
Igrit lifted her own cup, sniffed it suspiciously, and then took a sip. Her nose wrinkled around the flavour, causing a cute furrow in her brow and sliding a sour expression across her heart-shaped face. "What is this crap?" She asked no one in particular. She thought she heard a chuckle from Lucius' table, but refused to look around at him.
"It's Stahl. Fortifying and good for you, if you must know." Said the barman, a little offended at her reaction to a local specialty.
"Stahl? Well, it's strong enough at least." Igrit admitted grudgingly as she took a larger swallow of the bitter, but flavourful alcohol.
"Are you planning to take a room here," Dalla asked, after sipping her own.
"Probably. I assume you have rooms, barkeep? One with a clean bed and enough room to lay down in it?"
The barman nodded sourly.
"See, Dalla. Sorted. Now, are you going to tell me what that thing was? I've seen wolfmen before, even a Lycan, once. But that was neither." She asked, turning herself on the stool to lean her back against the bar and let out a small, satisfied sigh. Her flat stomach tensed as her leg complained at the motion, but she did her best to keep it from her face. The tight, strips of hide and leather that she wore about her well-formed chest were dirty and still stained with a little blood. She looked down at her skirt, layers of thick bear hide wrapped about her waist, with a canted hem. On one side it reached just above the knee and on the other only about a hand span down her muscular thigh.
The primitive, but well-cared-for clothes were all she had now. Her pack had sunk into the bog while she'd fought the beast. She shuddered at the memory of it, remembering its stinking breath and the glistening, dripping gnash of its jaws as they'd snapped at her face.
Igrit shook off the feeling and looked at the old woman again. Dalla was lost in her thoughts, holding her cup in both hands and gently rolling it between her palms as she stared glassily down at it. "I don't know what that was, not really. It was something evil though I can tell you that much. Something wrong."