[Sweetwine Woods] The Spice Interrogation

[Vega]

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10th Zi'da 717

"Yeah, I'd say it's perfect," Vega said with a slight grin. The clearing they'd chosen had a stream running nearby, a place for the campfire which would be ideal for them. It was defensible, there was a more covered area where their tent could go. "I wonder 'ow Ti'niva is," Vega said, frowning with concentration as they lifted the bench off the cart, the one she'd made which attached to the outside. "I shared a camp with 'im in Desnind for a little while. Wow, Arlo, that was this season last arc. That's when we met." She felt the muscles in her back working as they lowered the bench down, making sure that she bent her knees, not leaned forward. That was a sure fire way to pull a muscle. "You were swingin' yer legs sittin' on your tree." Vega couldn't deny, she'd like to go back to Desnind at some point, but she didn't know rightly when.

Such a lot had happened since then, for both of them separately and definitely for the two of them together. Where would they be this time next arc, she wondered? But Vega had no need to plan for a future that wasn't guaranteed. This time last arc she hadn't known him, this time next arc? Who knew where they'd be? Still together, still having fun she very much hoped but she and Arlo had talked about commitment enough to know that neither of them were planners. They'd be where they were and she was still coming to terms with the fact that, when she thought about her future, he was always in it. Always. It was a little unnerving in truth.

"You get focused on gettin' us sorted for food, an' I'll get us sorted for sleep?" It was what they usually did, but they always checked with each other, she wasn't quite sure why. They just did. Either way, she started the setting up of their tent. Placement was important, Vega had learned a lot over her time since she met Arlo. They'd set up their camp in lots of different places, and she'd learned to look at the surrounding area, looking at the trees in this case to consider where the best shelter was. Grabbing the shovel from the back of the cart, she first cleared the snow away and then started laying down the groundsheets. Vega was strangely, for her, methodical in this. She checked that there were no stones, covered the ground with the first groundsheet and got on from there. A couple of times, she needed to call him over to ask for help, just due to the size of the tent. Laying the tarp over the top was a fiddly job and Vega frowned as they did the last of it. "I might try an' make it so that it attaches, you know? Like.. I know it's silly as an example, but like... buttons. Ties an' buttons, in key places. Would make this easier. What'cha think?" Last time they'd been doing this, her cousins had turned up just at the most horribly timed moment. Remembering, Vega looked at him rather wickedly. "I'll behave myself this time. We've got too much to do. Jus', don't look at me like you look at me, an' it'll be fine." She knew herself well enough to know that, if he didn't behave, she wouldn't manage it. And they had a lot to do to get set up. It was early in the morning still, but if they were going to be settled in by night time, they had work ahead of them.

"So, last arc, we were stuck in Desnind, met Ti'niva, Asari an' each other. Wow. She was stupid, though, weren't she?" Vega rolled her eyes at the memory of the woman in high heel shoes in the woods in Zi'da, or actually maybe by then it was Cylus. It had certainly been Cylus when they'd gone into the deepest forests of Desnind to go and search for a little girl who'd been lost and Asari had turned up all bedraggled and sniffling and shivering. Vega had been her usual, entirely un-charming self and the two women had really not got on. "She 'ad nice hair though, didn't she?" Vega did her best to make it sound like a casual inquiry, an off the cuff remark. She didn't even fool herself. So, she stopped hauling the bedding off the cart and turned to him with a slight glare. "Long an' black. Jus' like the one I found in the box of spices. You got a woman on the side, Creede?" She didn't actually think he had and Vega considered that to be quite significant progress. But she was still a little unsure, a touch put out. So, rather than stew, she asked. Just to put him at his ease, though, she added. "Cos you know, if you 'ave that's fine. I'll bury you side by side when I kill you both. That'll be romantic won't it?" She shot him a grin to show that she was joking. Mostly. Almost all of her. "Alright it's not funny. Who's the long black 'aired woman rummagin' in my spices, Arlo?"

[Arlo Creede]

As Vega commented on the suitability of the place they'd chosen to set up camp, Arlo straightened from his work and took another look around. "Just about perfect, yeah. The lay of the land, right here, makes a natural windbreak." If you were going to rough it outdoors, he hadn't seen many places better than this one. Nature had obliged when they'd been looking, and they'd gotten lucky. So far as defending it, and stopping things sneaking up in the dark, the horses were some help. Lyova was even more, even though she tended to overreact now and again.

"It was a very good tree as trees go," he added with a grin while lifting one of crates from the back of the cart that contained his pots, pans and a few other items. It was heavy, the pot and the pan were made of cast iron. He'd probably put on a bit of muscle over the past arc just from lifting them. "Doesn't seem like that long, does it?" There were plenty of stones nearby to frame a good fire pit, once he'd dug up the best spot for it. Not so close to the tent or cart, or anything else that could easily catch fire, in case an errant breeze was to come in and lift up an errant, burning ember. But close enough to work with for both warmth, light and cooking. While he was at it he'd unload the crates and bench that Vega had made for sitting on.

Soon enough though, he left it as good enough and went to help her with the tent. Buttons and ties? "Maybe more like loops and hooks maybe? So long as the fabric has just enough give in it to work." Sure would make things easier though, he agreed. But just because she'd promised to behave, didn't mean he had, and just to test Vega's patience he waggled a brow and winked at her. But she was right anyway. They needed to set themselves up well in advance of nightfall.

"Assari?" he asked then, frowning curious. "Oh, yeah, that was her name. I hadn't thought of her in a while. Think I was trying to forget." After all, the woman's unsuitability to the wilderness, or the outdoors at all, had nearly got them all killed. Might get someone killed yet. Though why Vega mentioned her hair was mystery and he frowned again. "Her hair?" Arlo shrugged. "I don't know what nice according to a woman. It was hair. I like yours better."

What was she getting at, Arlo wondered? Because he was fairly sure she was getting at something. He'd never once known her to be interested in another woman's hair or sense of fashion, and if she'd taken a sudden interest, it was a strange place to start. But then she got there, even if he had no idea where there was. Box of spices? What black hair? "Why are you asking about another woman? I told you before there wasn't. And there isn't." he told her. But then she mentioned the hair, the woman and the spice box again and suddenly it struck him how the three were connected.

"That's not a woman Vega," he said and shook his head with a grin. "That was Faith, from the university. I think you were out hunting or something that trial, and I'd been at the last of my classes. I told you before remember? She's a healer, but a chef too and we were talking about cooking and the yellow dragon wood. About whether it added flavor to the food or not. Or if it was the spices I was using. She came by, and rummaged through that box," he explained. But that wasn't all, he added.

Walking to the back of the cart, he lifted out a bundle to bring closer to the fire. "I wanted it to be a surprise, once I got good at it then I'd have shown you. I'm only a little better than when I started," he said and unrolled the bundle. Inside was a stringed instrument, a gittern. "Turns out she was learning music and I'd bought this, thinking I'd learn to play a little. Maybe play along with my stories or something. She knew something about music, and helped a little before she left."

[Vega]

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It had been a good tree, Vega agreed with a grin. He'd been sat there, swinging his legs and she'd tormented him about it. As they moved the crates and heavy items, she recalled that meeting and her grin at him was fond, thoughtful even. It didn't seem that long ago, he said and Vega shrugged slightly, even as she moved to help him with the lifting. Not do it herself, no, he didn't like that she knew. But helping was acceptable, so long as she didn't remind him that she was stronger than him, that was. "I dunno. Sometimes I feel like I've known you all my life." That bordered on romantic, she thought, and so she added quickly, "no wonder I'm so miserable an' cantankerous." Her grin showed that she was teasing about the second part at least, but the first bit was true. That the land was good, just right for them, well that was a bonus.

He agreed on the idea of attaching the tarp and when he said loops and hooks, she grinned at him. "Well, that's what I meant. Jus', you know, didn't say." Looking up from where she was attaching it, she was going to say that she thought of buttons and ties because she was a girl, but he gave her that look and for all that she knew he was joking, teasing her, Vega could no more hide the darkening of her eyes than she could ever camouflage their shifting colours. She hated that, she decided; he was tormenting her and she was allowing herself to be tormented. "You watch yer step, Arlo Creede," she said, her gaze locked on his. "Or I'm gonna..." she frowned as a realisation came to her and Vega flung a bundle of bedding, wrapped together, at him. "I've got nothin'. No threat, no quick comeback." She glared at him as she said it. "All I've got is stop it or we're gettin' nothin' done for a few breaks." Her expression cleared and she grinned. "Or nothin' useful."

His response about Asari's hair caused a grin to flit across her face. Boys were strange things, she thought, Arlo more than most. Vega was under no illusions about how she looked, most of the time she was disheveled at best and that was not an accidental thing. She didn't care, genuinely, whereas Asari had very much cared about her appearance and her hair had been very well cared for. "Nah, mine is hair. Hers was nice hair. She took real good care of it. I mean, she 'ad all sorts of weird things an' stuff for skin an' hair an' all sorts. Tried to educate me, but yeah, no." Asari had told her, Vega recalled, that there were creams and potions which could help her soften the skin of her hands. She looked down at them, wondering what that would be like, then shrugged and decided that would be like a stupid thing that she had no interest in. "An' she 'ad good nails. Remember 'er nails?" Those had been impressive.

But then, under interrogation he caved in and admitted that he'd been cavorting around with another woman. Or, when she asked him, he explained with a perfectly reasonable answer, but she preferred her version. Faith? "She's the pregnant an' married one, yeah?" Vega grinned at him, her eyes telling the truth of her next words, but also that she was vaguely embarrassed about it herself. "I thought it was Qit'ria. I was 'alf way ready to go an' poke 'er in the oozin' sores." She was more than a little convinced that Qit'ria was engaged in a campaign to make Arlo hers. "But a'right, pregnant an' 'appily married with a shared cookin' thing. I'll allow it." She smiled at him as she said that ~ he hopefully knew that she wouldn't ever consider using words like that seriously.

When he went to the cart, though and pulled out a bundle, Vega wondered what it might be but said nothing, waiting for him to show her. As he unwrapped it, though, she let out an exclamation of delight. "Oh, Arlo, that's great! Oh, go on," sitting down to listen she nodded to him, encouragingly. "show us, then."

[Arlo Creede]

"We'd get plenty done," Arlo countered, still teasing Vega and winking again while they worked. "And I wouldn't exactly call it a waste of time." No, far from it but he got her point anyway. The wilds under ordinary circumstances could be a harsh and dangerous place. From what he'd heard so far about Sweetwine Woods and what could be lurking and roaming just out of sight, only fools would be setting their camp up after darkness had fallen.

Did she mean kept hair then, he asked when she argued the point about Asari's hair? "I like your hair better," he insisted again. He remembered her nails, sure. She could have used them as some sort of weapon. "I remember the shoes," Arlo said and grinned, thinking back to the ridiculous footwear the woman had opted for while they were trudging through the wilderness. "I don't know how she managed it without 'em sinking into the ground or breaking through the ice. And she'd have frozen to death if she had." No proper coat either, as he remembered it.

"Yeah, the pregnant and married one," he confirmed, finally getting down to the business of building a proper fire. One that would burn plenty warm, fueled by good hard wood that would also burn slowly. All the better to last without needing to constantly add more. "But why Qit'ria? I've only come across her the two times. At our camp and in that fog." There was no interest there on his part. Not a bit, and it was beyond Arlo how Vega could think the woman might be interested in him. He'd seen nothing that would suggest as much. Women.

But he'd brought out the gittern to show her, without necessarily meaning to play it. He wasn't good enough yet and had wanted to be before he did. Still, he sat down on one of the boxes that she'd made and cradled the thing in his lap. After tuning it, relying on his ear to do it, he picked out a few notes before beginning to put them together into some sort of tune. Not from any sheet of music he'd seen, but from his imagination. No strumming right then, he preferred singular notes that fell smoothly into the next.

"I figured that there's lots of ways to tell stories. Maybe as many as there are people who tell them. And maybe songs are just stories set to music," he said while he played, and every once in a while as if to catch her attention short and emphasize a point, he picked out a note that sounded something like a small bell rung once. "I don't sing though and don't plan on it. But you can write a story down for others to read, or you can tell it or sing it. This I figured was just another way to do it." Whichever way he went about it though, Arlo had been thinking about what Cassion had said. Write them down. It made good sense no matter the reason. Stories were just indulgences of the imagination, daydreaming, unless there were others who read or heard them.

[Vega]

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At his continued tormenting, Vega put down what she was doing and walked over to him. Taking his hands in hers, she moved so that her nose and his were touching. "Who said anythin' about a waste of time, Arlo Creede?" Vega leaned foward and kissed him with a brief and fierce passion before pulling out of his arms and moving back over to what she was doing. "Now quit torturin' me, or I'm not gonna quit doin' the same righ' back. A'right?" It was much more enjoyable than punching him, she decided. Besides, while he was tormenting her, he was in the position of power and she didn't, not ever, like that. No, better to take control of the situation. Vega shot him a grin and got back to focusing on getting them set up for sleeping that night.

Kept hair? Vega stopped and looked at him quizzically. "Wot in the name of U'frek's bum is kept 'air, Arlo? I mean, I know I'm not an expert on women's beauty, but 'ow come you know words about it I don't?" She shook her head, more than half convinced that he was making it up on the spot. "I mean, it was nice. In good condition, well looked after. An' yer jus' bein' stubborn." She smiled, though, pleased that he maintained that he liked her hair the best. It drove Vega to distraction when his hands were in her hair, so she was pleased that he found it at least bearable. Quite how, she didn't know, but she also didn't argue. "Right answer, by the way. Good work." Asari had definitely had a grudge against coats, Vega agreed. After all, in the cave, she'd had two jobs. Hold Vega's coat and the lantern. She dropped the first and then fell and shattered the second.

"Arlo," Vega said, with a totally serious expression on her face. "I mean, I dunno wots gonna 'appen in our lives, you know. An' it might be that one trial we find ourselves wearin' grown up clothes an' things. Maybe one trial I'll care about that kind of stuff, but if I ever become the kind of more-use-cooked-than-breathin' useless she was, please put me out of my misery an' kill me." Every now and then, Vega admitted, she thought it might be nice to wear nice frocks and sleep in soft feather beds. She certainly didn't want to do that in any long term capacity, but who knew what a fancy party was like. She gave a grin, "like the Dawn Ball, you remember?" But no matter where they ended up, if she ever got useless, she'd be miserable and she was clear about that.

She didn't even notice that all the way through, she talked about them, using 'us' and 'our' and 'we' where she once, not long ago, would have used 'I' when thinking about the future.

Watching as he set the fire, Vega frowned slightly. "Why aren't you usin' the yellow dragon wood?" There'd be some kind of reason, she was sure. He confirmed that the long black hair belonged to one of his fellow students, a woman he'd met a few times but who was by all accounts happily married and pregnant. Vega nodded, that was fine and not even she could get jealous about that, but when he asked about Qit'ria she looked at him in surprise. "The woman who wandered into our camp, assumin' I'm a whore an' made noises like a cheap tart in a two silver a pop brothel while eatin' yer food? That one? The vulnerable little 'ungry mite all big eyes an' moans of pleasure? Oh, I dunno." She looked at him and shook her head. "Sometimes, yer thicker than my porridge." Qit'ria was definitely trying to get her claws into Arlo, Vega didn't doubt it. Still, he seemed completely oblivious and that was good. In fact, she had to admit, she approved.

When he sat with the gittern on his lap, though, Vega turned her attention to him and sat with him, listening to him talk and play at the same time. "It's like.. talkin' a story to music? Is that what you mean?" The emphasis on each note, though, that was good and she liked it. It made the conversation seem like a song. Songs were definitely stories set to music, that was true as far as she was concerned. She knew a few good sea-shanties, Vega said with a grin, which might make good additions if he wanted.

"When 'e said about writin' them down, do you think Cassion just meant the stories you 'ear, Arlo?" Vega asked, thoughtfully. "I mean, we get up to some exciting stuff. Maybe 'e means writin' down the story of your life, too?"

[Arlo Creede]

"Kept hair," Arlo had repeated when Vega looked at him as if he'd sprouted a third eye in the middle of his forehead. "My mother used to say it about the women in Rharne who looked down their noses at her for wearing her trousers and hat to market," he remembered back. "Women in silks and stockings, wives of important men but without a thought in their heads. Kept women with their kept hair." Perfumed, oiled, piled up and bound in ribbons. Kept hair.

He couldn't imagine her ever being like that, he'd told her. No matter how much time was passed, no matter where they went or what they were doing with themselves. Them, being the operative word there. "You're too smart to be like that. Too good at too many things to waste it. Maybe though," he said, and grinned when she mentioned the Dawn Ball, "It wouldn't hurt us to clean ourselves up once in a while. Maybe stay at an inn and have a fancy meal. We haven't done that in a while. Or soaked in a proper tub either."

He wasn't using the dragon wood right then because, well, sometimes he liked using plain old wood that he'd gathered himself from the woods. Something that kept a good flame going, and put out a different scent. A change for cooking as well, next he prepared a meal. As for Qit'ria, he frowned and shook his head. "I just figured she had poor table manners is all." All that smacking, groaning. He could hardly have missed it after all. "The whore comment though, that wasn't funny but she seemed to think so. I'm not thick," he added and grinned then. "You're just over suspicious."

But stories told to music, not sung ones. Right, that's what he meant. "Not for all the time, but I like the idea of it. And though I've learned a little about reading music, I don't care for it as much as playing what's going on in my head," Arlo admitted. And those sea shanties? He'd like to hear them and they could work very well. Long as he didn't have to sing them. And as he played, he thought back to what Cassion had told him on that boat ride.

"I'm not sure he meant I should write down my life. More...he told me that there were lots of stories here on Scalvoris," he remembered. "He gave me a blank journal and said I should write them down in there. For him." Of course he wasn't sure, he admitted, if that meant that there were stories floating around yet that he hadn't heard and would. On the other hand, "Like you say, we find plenty to get into, things that make for good stories themselves. Maybe he meant those too."

[Vega]

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Vega snorted his description of 'kept hair'. "You're such a doofus, Arlo. A kept woman is a woman what gets everythin' bought for 'er, her only job is to look pretty. The 'usband brings in all the money, she spends it." That was what his mother had been talking about, kept women who spent a fortune on their hair ~ all at the expense of their poor husband. Shaking her head, slightly, she grinned at Arlo. The world was back on track, Arlo Creede was completely oblivious to all things subtle or to do with womanhood; water was wet and the sky was blue.

She raised an eyebrow and shook her head at him at his assertion that she was too smart to be that way. "I'm not smart, Arlo. I'm thick as a brick when it comes to learnin' an' stuff. But that's a'righ', that's what I keep you around for. That an' lookin' pretty, a'course." Equally, she didn't buy being good at things, but she was clear about one thing. "I can fight. That's what I do. Fight an' hunt. I don't need or want to be anythin' more than what I am." Considering it, though, she gave a grin. "I can do practical stuff. If there's ever one of those apocryphal, end of the world things, no one's gonna be relyin' on Asari, I tell you. I'd rather be me."

These trials, that was even true.

"Sleepin' in a bed? Well, we've never done that together." Vega's expression showed a little surprise, but not a lot. Every now and then, twice now since they'd met, they'd stayed in an inn, once in Desnind and once in Ne'haer. As for cleaning up, "I dunno, I mean. I spend a long time in the tub as it is. Imagine 'ow much longer it'd take if you were there too." The crooked smile on her face was an expression he hadn't seen until quite recently, and only he had ever seen it. "Yer fingers would go all wrinkly, an you might get bored." It had to be said, the thought of a soak in a hot tub, especially in this cold weather was something that Vega was quite delighted at the thought of. "An' a fancy meal? I don't think we've ever 'ad one of them from an inn, 'ave we? Oh, Immortals, Arlo, remember that bloody awful food in the inn in Desnind? I told you to order the fish, but nope. An' they served bugs." Then, she recalled, in Ne'haer they'd had hearty food, but not as good as anything he cooked. "Fanciest food I've ever 'ad is what you cook me. No need to be spendin' our nel, unless you fancy a night off cookin'? That's different. An' it's my turn to pay." The last she added quickly, not entirely sure whether it was her turn or not, but wanting to make sure that she took care of things like that.

Ignoring his obvious lack of understanding of Qit'ria's motives ~ a state which she wholly approved of ~ Vega was entranced when he played, the sound of the gittern accompanying his voice and somehow making it more rhythmic. More.. well, there was a whole sort of aura around him, she thought. There had been, always, when he started telling stories and Vega could listen to that all trial. The quiet accompaniment of the gittern just added another dimension to it. "Well, there's all those stories for 'im 'ere, aren't there? I think you should jus' do what you think is best fer yer worship of 'im." Sitting opposite him, she grinned. "Tell me a story, Arlo?" Vega motioned to the gittern, "with that. Please?"

That the gittern playing was basic, compared to how it would be soon, Vega didn't care. She loved the sound of his voice when he told a story and, somehow, it took on something magical. Like an empath with someone's mood, he pulled you in and Vega could see the words. But then, fairly early on in said story, a deep frown creased her forehead and Vega stopped focusing on his words, or the way his voice sounded or how his fingers moved and she looked at him with an expression on her face that he'd seen before, actually. Just after he'd come home from a graveyard. Vega's hand reached out, as though to touch him but she stopped. "Arlo, yer doin' it again, but it's not jus' blue. What's this?" Then, as though she realised something ~ which she had ~ Vega's hand stopped hesitating and she grabbed hold of his arm. If he was going to disappear off somewhere, she resolved, this time she was bloody well going with him.

[Arlo Creede]

"Well it doesn't seem like a fair exchange does it?" Arlo shot back when Vega produced her version of a kept woman. The woman after all would need to fairly good at something to give a man the impression that it was an equitable trade. If pressed he could probably think of a number of things, a couple anyway that might suffice. But better he figured that he didn't say so. They'd gone off track anyway, which they did as often as not.

She wasn't thick though, he insisted and not for the first time since they'd met. Different people learned in different ways, and some were better at some things than others. It evened out in the end. There was no question that Vega could fight though, and better than most. Apocryphal though? He didn't quite think it was the word she was looking for but he failed to mention it. She was right though. There were people in the world that would be as good as useless should the it all come unraveled at the seams.

He didn't get quite the reaction he was looking for though when he suggested they might have a night at the inn and a fancy meal. But then maybe it was the one he should have expected. "It wouldn't be half bad now would it?" Arlo said, grinning, when she raised the complications of bathing together. "I'd be anything but bored Vega though we might never make it down for dinner." Anyway, bugs for the Tunawa, he pointed out. At least that's what he'd come to understand later on. But then he frowned and shook his head when she insisted it was her turn to pay. "A date Vega," he said. "I was asking if you wanted to have a date, a night out." And he was fairly clear that the one doing the asking would be the one doing the paying.

Another time however, since at the moment they were a long ways from civilization. And she was probably right. What he was doing already, making stories, him or the two of them, telling them, writing them down, it seemed that Cassion approved already. Now it was just a matter of what he wrote them down in. But she wanted a story and so she'd get one. Continuing to pick and strum on his gittern, he told her about the little handwritten map he'd found in a larger book of maps that he'd got as a child. It was drawn apparently by the man who'd owned the book before him, and it seemed that man had been in Desnind before.

And it was in Desnind where he'd followed that map to discover a strange and ancient maze in the forest. "There was a note on that map, suggesting he'd once hidden a treasure there, inside that maze," Arlo told her. But he'd gone in, him and Lyova but turned out, it wasn't an ordinary maze. Not by a long shot. There'd been dead ends that turned out not to be dead ends at all, but strange unseen portals that opened up and swallowed him up at the pulling of a lever.

And on the other side of those portals? There'd been other worlds the likes of which he'd never imagined. One was like stepping into a painting like one that was hung in a gallery, except the paint hadn't dried yet and clung to his clothing and boots as he strolled through it. Another was a deserted island, just him and the rest of it frozen still in an instant. "The waves, birds, fish, the leaves of a single tree, all frozen in place until I moved and it moved with me." And a large box that swallowed him up and turned in the air while he crawled from floor to wall to ceiling and back again in search of a way out.

He never found that treasure, if there'd ever been there at all. Then again, maybe what he'd experienced there, maybe that had been the point of it all. He was caught up in it himself, the telling of the story. And so at first he missed the expression on Vega's face. The sudden change, that was and the way she was looking at him. "What? What am I doing?" he asked, and his fingers stilled on the strings. It took a little longer to figure it out. Arlo followed her gaze to where her hand had took hold of him, and he adopted an even more confused expression, based on what he saw. Or thought he did. The change was faint after all, though might be more noticeably after dark.

But there was a definite...something surrounding him. As if he'd released a breath of warm air into the frigid cold..except that he seemed to have it from head to toe. But not like an ordinary breath let into the air. It was shifting, colored like an aurora, waning, waxing, flaring but as subtle as could be. It could have been missed really unless someone was really looking close. Arlo frowned, realizing suddenly that since he'd been back he'd begun to feel just a little different, though he couldn't exactly say how. And then it suddenly dawned on him, and he grinned. "U'frek. It was U'frek. I remember now. I remember a lot now that I didn't before. Like that game, that competition. I won the round," he told her.

[Vega]

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Raising an eyebrow at the lack of equitable trade-off, Vega shrugged. "I was raised on a ship with my Papa, Uncle an' all my male cousins.They called those kind of women trinket wives." It was a competition, she said, or a sign of superiority if you had the most expensive trinket on your arm. For the man, it was a sign of status, a symbol of success. For the woman, it was a chance to get everything paid for. Shrugging, slightly, Vega grinned. How had they gotten on to this, she wondered to herself? Trinket wives and kept women?

When he insisted that she wasn't thick, despite the obvious truth of the statement in her eyes, Vega shook her head. He wasn't changing her mind, she knew herself too well and so did he, for all that he insisted on denying it. She'd have argued further except she got distracted from it, though, when he spoke about the tub, how he wouldn't get bored and Vega grinned. "I dunno, Arlo, I mean, I take a long time in the bath, you know that." Her tone was teasing when she considered. "I mean, I like to really soak an' then make sure that I'm really clean. Every last bit. Even in between my toes." She knew full well that bored was the last thing either of them would be and she had to admit, it did sound nice. But, to be clear. "We'd make it down for dinner. I told you, it works up an appetite, that does. Amount of time it takes me to 'ave a bath on my own, if it was both of us, I reckon we'd be close to starvin'."

Her grin froze slightly, though, when he said that he was asking her on a date. Vega looked at him with suddenly bright pink eyes and the words tumbled from her in a rush. "What do you, why do you, what?" She looked genuinely disconcerted at the idea, a thoughtful frown settling on her face as she realised that he was serious. Considering it for a moment, her expression cleared and she smiled. A date with a tub, with fancy food and a feather bed, she thought? Her eyes shone with delight. "I'd like that," she said, sounding almost shy. "Thanks."

However, that was all fanciful and probably would never be more than that, she thought. Right now, there was the two of them and the story he was telling. Vega was, there was no doubt, entranced. He seemed to be able to make the words come alive and she listened intently. The maze in Desnind, he'd mentioned it before, but she hadn't heard the full story. As entranced as she was, though, the strange glowing around him was more than enough for her to grab on to him and when he asked what he was doing, she was clear. "Yer glowin' again, stop it!"

He looked as confused as she felt, until his expression cleared and then he said it was U'frek. But the last time he'd gone all glow-worm, she said, that had been the graveyard and the mist. "I thought U'frek was nothin' to...what round?" Vega frowned and then looked at him sternly. "Alrigh' sunshine, you know what, start at the beginnin'." Vega kept a firm hold on his arm, entwining her fingers in his and listening as he did just that. As he did, though, her face told of her emotions; pride shone on her face. When he was done, she lifted herself up to kiss him with her usual fierce passion, her hand letting his go in order to bury into his hair. "You won. I'm right pleased for you, Arlo. Well done." She grinned, moving back to sit next to him. "So, what does this mean? What next?" Was he about to disappear off again, was mostly what she meant with that question. It was fine if he was, she said, but they were going to have to work out a way for him to come back without them arguing.

[Arlo Creede]

"Good," Arlo said when Vega caught on to what it was he was asking. And he grinned in response. "It'll be a first for me too." He figured, even without her admitting it, that she'd never been on a proper date before. Neither had he. There'd been girls, but arranging to meet up behind the barn at midnight, wasn't exactly dating. "We'll do it up right. Fancy clothes and everything, even if we stay so long in the bath that we never get down the stairs for supper," he teased her.

He didn't think he could stop glowing, Arlo argued then, while still marveling at a change that he'd only just now noticed. Had there been some sort of delay in it happening? He could only assume it was the case. He'd have noticed it the night before in the dark, where he assumed it might be more visible. "It's not like before, when I turned blue. That was my skin and this is different." Very different from top to bottom.

Remembering back, he went over what had happened. U'frek had snatched them up from their dreams, Arlo told her. Him, Pash, Kali'rial and another woman named Emmaline. It was Emmaline that had tried to stop an arrow with his name on it and been shot in his stead. Unfortunately the woman who'd tried to kill them all in an effort to eliminate her competition, had shot several times more at an unnatural speed while time otherwise slowed down.

But he told her about the rooms and the puzzles, Schubert who it turned out was Cassion in disguise and had saved him from his wound. And then he described the last bit, where they'd been asked to pick a gem from a number of them. "I got lucky, I guess. I picked the right one. But our group, U'frek had chosen us. I guess that's why...this," Arlo added, referring to the change that had come over him.

And again, he guessed that at some point he'd be snatched up again in order to carry on with the game. "Not now...Cylus maybe?" he figured. Then strange as it seemed while she held his hand, he seemed to understand just what this favor from U'frek might allow him to do. Useful things, he realized, related to life on the sea or land either one.