• Closed • Storytime

[Devin]

31st of Saun, Arc 718

On the 31st of Saun, Devin Thorn, thief, con man extraordinaire, bard and priest of Delroth, sat under a tree outside of Cally’s, the restaurant where he regularly played his music in the evening, his beloved lute that had travelled with him all the way from Rynmere in his lap. The suns were burning down relentlessly, not even a light breeze was blowing, and the sky was a deep blue and completely devoid of clouds, but here, in the shade, it was almost bearable, especially since Devin had taken his shoes off and rolled up his pant legs and his sleeves which also revealed the curious feather-like markings on his arms.

His familiar, a colourful parrot, sat in the branches above him. The bird that was still lacking a name occasionally croaked a greeting – or a curse – at the passersby, but he mostly sat there quietly, seemingly listening to his human companion for Devin was composing. He was composing a new song that would premiere the following season – his first ever composition since he had become a proper bard, the kind of bard that actually got paid for playing music. It was a song about his adventure in the Sweetwine Woods where he had encountered a magical tree that had turned his eyes violet and nearly lost his life.

The song started out relatively calm and slow, but it gradually got faster and more ominous. Devin had already been working on it for the better part of the past cycle, and he had finally gotten to the point where it didn’t resemble the sounds that a cat made when you stepped on its tail anymore and would hopefully not make his audience go deaf. In fact, it sounded comparatively nice, and he played the chords nearly effortlessly – at least until he got stuck and stopped abruptly because he just couldn't come up with a proper ending for his song.

He didn’t let that discourage him though. Instead, he bowed to his audience that was probably non-existent and started anew, smiling slightly and humming softly as he did so because he was really enjoying himself.

[Kyreen]

Ky plodded through the town after she finished her early shift. It was far too hot to move faster. She was neatly but simply dressed in brown skirt and beige blouse, and boots that shielded her feet from the burning cinders that hit the kitchen floor all too often. At least her skirt made a slight breeze as she moved. Nothing else moved any of the air, as if the suns had baked it solid.

At first she thought she had imagined the faint music in the air, but as she moved on it grew clearer. There had to be a musician somewhere around. She turned her head this way and that, her bulk and the roundness of her plain face giving the impression of an owl seeking its prey. As she searched, the misic grew more ominous, and then she finally spotted the tree ahead of her, and the man seated under it. Almost as soon as she saw him, the music stopped abruptly. Ky's eyebrows climbed towards her hair for a moment, as she wondered if the abrupt halt had been a reaction to her gaze or a coincidence. She relaxed a little when the music started up again, and waded through the hot heavy air towards the musician.

He was youngish, pretty in a way that set her teeth on edge and made her remember all the times she'd been taunted that she wasn't, and clearly enjoying his song. What there was of it. She edged into the shade without quite coming within reach and waited for a pause, before she asked with a rather wry smile to soften it, "Did you forget how the song finishes, or are you just keeping it a secret?"

[Devin]

As he noticed somebody approach him, Devin stopped playing his song and looked up, raising an eyebrow very lightly as he did so. The girl that stood in front of him was plain. In fact, she was one of the plainest people that he’d seen since he’d arrived in Scalvoris, and everything about her was brown. She had brown hair, she was wearing a brown skirt and brown boots, and her blouse was kind of brown as well. She also had a voice that was kind of interesting though, and she was the only one that was listening to him at the moment, apart from his parrot, so he gave her the most brilliant smile that he was capable of and patted the ground in front of him, thus inviting her to sit with him.

“It’s a secret”, he claimed. His eyes twinkled with merriment as he looked at her. “I have a lot of secrets. In fact, I have more secrets than any other man in Idalos, and I challenge you to find them all out!” He plucked the strings of his lute, for a bit of an additional dramatic effect, coaxing a sequence of brilliant sounds from his instrument, before he asked her, “Do you want to know what the song is about? It was quite an adventure! It happened late this Ashan. I had just recently come to Scalvoris Town from Viden when I heard of a lot of strange things happening in the …” he began, without waiting for her to let him know if she really wanted to hear his story.

After a few trills he stopped speaking again abruptly and furrowed his brow. He realized that he’d forgotten something. Something important. Something that no bard that was worth his salt should forget. He stood up, bowed in a somewhat exaggerated fashion and proclaimed, “Forgive me, I haven’t introduced myself yet. Devin Thorn, master bard and Blessed of Delroth, the best Immortal ever. And who might you be?”

[Kyreen]

His smile was such a practised dazzle that the hairs on Ky's neck prickled in warning at the sight. This was someone - was a bard - used to charming an audience, and probably charming his way out of problems too, instead of working to solve them. He wasn't someone she had met before, but then again, she hadn't been in Scalvoris Town long enough to meet many folk. Despite the warning prickle, her curiousity was calling louder at the mention of secrets and the offer of the story behind the song. Curiousity had always been her biggest weakness.

He seemed more interested in her as an audience than as a person, but he had offered her a seat in the shade, and in weather like this, that was something she wasn't ashamed to accept. She folded herself down to sit crosslegged on the ground, a touch wary, and smoothed her skirts out over her knees. He started straight in on the story without waiting for a response from her, which just confirmed her first impression. She laced her fingers together in her lap to stop them betraying her unease by twisting the edges of her clothes around them, and listened.

He didn't past the proclamation of when it happened (Ashan) and how much of an adventure it was, before he interrupted himself to jump to his feet. His bow and introduction was so ridiculously overblown and exaggerated that Ky had to bite her lip not to laugh in his face at the sight. She couldn't prevent a smile from escaping. "I'm Ky," she said briefly, once she got control of her voice back. "Out of Darbyton." Since he seemed to think profession mattered, she added. "Baker."

She cocked her head on one side, not realising that it echoed a common parrot posture. "You were saying the adventure happened in Ashan?"

[Devin]

“Hello, Ky, the baker from Darbyton“, Devin greeted Kyreen before he sat down again and grabbed his lute once more in order to coax another sequence of chords from it. “Do you make cakes as well? If you do, I’d very much like to buy one sometime”, he remarked and offered her another one of his dazzling smiles because he absolutely loved sweet things. When he had been a little boy in Andaris he had stolen a cake that somebody had left to cool in a window once because his parents had been too poor to be able to afford one. Since then he couldn’t get enough of those baked goods!

“Anyway, as I said, I had just returned from Viden when I heard of strange things happening in the Sweetwine Woods. The Elements were looking for volunteers, so I did of course offer them my help. I’m not only a bard of some skill, but also an accomplished naturalist, you know?” he asked and let his hand glide across the strings of his lute. “They separated us into different groups in order to search different parts of the woods. We were told that there was a pillar of light somewhere in the woods that was making all the animals act out of character.”

“I was ordered to lead my group to the western side of the woods”, he continued – which wasn’t true at all. His group had gone to the western side of the woods, but he had not been the leader. The leader had been Tom, some sort of stupid guy from the university that had nearly gotten them all killed which was why Devin had decided to leave him out of the story and make himself the hero. He had at least had a few good ideas!

“So I did. My group consisted of a blue-skinned doctor, a warrior woman, a giantess and a bunch of idiots among other things. The giantess was quite interesting, and pretty too!” he informed Kyreen as if the giantess’ looks were of the utmost importance.

“We had been walking for about a break and a half when we entered a clearing – a clearing that was full of gigantic colourful rabbits that quickly surrounded us and made all kinds of worrisome sounds as if they were thinking of trying to eat us, and they were growing louder with each passing trill. Do you know what I did? Do you know how I kept the giant bunnies from attacking us, Ky from Darbyton?” he asked, looked up from his lute and raised an eyebrow. “Feel free to guess!”

[Kyreen]

She shook her head when he asked about cake. "It's too hot to stand over an oven making a cake. It's bad enough with bread and pies - like you've got two days this hot squashed together in one place." It was an idea though. If people wanted cake and if she could get a proper oven built into her house...

She set that plan aside for a moment as he went on to tell her about woods and pillars of light and the group he was in. He took a particular effort to rub her nose in the fact that even a giantess was pretty - and she wasn't. It wasn't that she was interested in the flirting and attention that good looks seemed to attract, but it would have been nice not to be shamed for not having them, like looks were more important than the person behind them.

She gritted her teeth and tried not to look hurt, though she wasn't sure how well she succeeded. Then he wanted her to guess how he stopped bunnies from eating him. She pursed her lips and pressed a finger to them as if in deep thought. "Smirked at them until they fell over dazzled by your charm?" she suggested, her tone somewhere between dry irony and blatantly false innocence. She went on with more suggestions, each as ridiculous as she could come up with on the spur of the moment. "Got the giantess to stun them with her looks? Threw sticks at them to block their little mouths? Made them dance with your music? Wilted them out of their rainbow fur with a bucket of bleach? Danced nuts out of the trees to distract them? Ran up a tree and hung upside down like a set of bats? Lent them your mirror so they could preen in front of it? Chattered back at them about rabbit pie until they got scared in turn?"

She gave him an enquiring look after each guess to see if she was right. She doubted that she was, but she had no doubt that he would brag about what he had actually done, given even half a chance.

[Devin]

“Well“, Devin said as Kyreen told him that it was too hot to stand over an oven making cake. “You could just get an alchemist or a Transmuter to enchant your oven so that it doesn’t radiate heat anymore. I worked for an alchemist once. He could do some pretty amazing things. He made a potion that gave me the most beautiful voice ever. Unfortunately, the effect only lasted a season”, he added and let out a sigh. He made it sound as if he had been said alchemist’s assistant. In truth, he had just been his test subject and gotten some free stuff because he had ingested all kinds of questionable concoctions, and he had never practiced any real alchemy himself.

As Kyreen made her first guess as to how he had kept the bunnies from eating him, he simply looked at her, smiling slightly, and shook his head. With each subsequent guess his eyes widened a little more though, until he looked at her in absolute awe. “You are incredibly creative”, he exclaimed. “Did you just come up with all those things? Please tell me, what’s your secret? You shouldn’t be a baker, you should be a storyteller or write the lyrics for my new song. I’m starting a band with the famous Talieson, you know? You could be a part of it!” he proclaimed. She wasn’t much to look at, but by Delroth, she was funny, and she had a way with words that was simply astounding!

“Anyway, I didn’t do any of those things”, he continued and let his fingers glide across the strings of his lute, continuing his song. “Instead, I gave the leader of the giant bunnies my hat – my favourite hat, no less. Afterwards, we were friends, and the bunnies helped my companions and me traverse the Vulture Haven – a place that it is filled with the bodies of dead adventurers”, he lied in order to make his story seem a little more exciting because the truth was really lacking in his opinion.

“Soon, we found ourselves on an island in the middle of the river. There was a gigantic magical tree on it – the source of all the strange happenings, and there was a door in the trunk of the tree. I advised my companions not to open it as I had a really bad feeling, but apparently one of them misunderstood my words and opened it. Do you want to know what happened then? You won’t believe it!” he claimed.

[Kyreen]

She raised her eyebrows back at him when he suggested getting someone to change the oven so that it didn't radiate heat. That was all very well in the hot cycle, but when the cold weather rolled around the heat from the ovens turned pleasant. Besides, it wasn't even her oven. "And if the alchemist or whoever gets the enchantment even a little wrong, nothing will cook in the oven," she pointed out. "And I don't know about you, but I've never been as fond of raw dough as I am of cooked food."

He smiled and shook his head at her first guess, and anger prickled as she read condescension into it. When it gradually changed to awe though - that warmed her heart. Approval was a rare thing for her to receive, and for her to win past a first impression was a delight that brought a smile to her own lips. "Oh, it's just practice," she replied with a small shrug. "If I want to charm someone, I have to use wit, rather than being able to rely on a pretty face to do the job for me." Her smile took on a wry twist. "Best I remain in the background, I'm told. Successful entertainers need looks as well as skill."

He hadn't done any of her silly suggestions, of course, and as she expected, he was more than happy to tell her more of the story. Trading hats with rabbits? That was almost as ridiculous as the ideas that she had come up with. And now there was a tree with a door.... "Did it send out vines to pick your pockets?" she tossed out when he wanted her to guess again. "Or thorny briars to puncture both your outfit and your ego? Or a new hat made of rabbit ears?"

[Devin]

“Then you’d just have to hire a master alchemist”, Devin told Kyreen as she voiced her concerns about what would happen if they got the enchantment wrong. “Master alchemists rarely get something wrong - accidentally. It’s possible that they’ll screw your oven up on purpose because they don’t like you though. As for eating raw dough, I ate raw cookie dough with lots of chocolate chips once, and it was absolutely delicious, even though I got a little sick afterwards. I’m not particularly fond of raw bread dough though”, he admitted and shuddered slightly. “Yeast is really unappealing, don’t you think?”

“And if they are really good, successful entertainers don’t need a pretty face”, he disagreed. “Besides, maybe you wouldn’t look so bad if you did your hair and put on nice clothes. I could help you with that”, he offered because he was in the mood for a challenge and because Delroth would probably appreciate him making a plain girl look beautiful and eyed her appraisingly. Her hair stuck out in all directions, and her face was the color of an unbaked loaf, but a bit of makeup would probably do wonders for her.

“No, when that idiot opened the door in the tree, there was a terrible wind, and all those colourful things came out of the tree and knocked us off our feet, there was a really loud sound – it felt as if my eardrums were about to burst - and then we started to mutate, and then …” Devin told Kyreen and stopped abruptly for a moment as he realized something. “Hey, did you just insult me? What’s wrong with my ego and my outfit? My shirt was very expensive, and it’s made of real silk!” he informed her and pointed at the shirt in question that was a nice shade of violet.

[Kyreen]

Ky eyed the lurid violet shirt. It was so loud it was virtually shouting "Look at me! Look at me!" rather like one of her younger siblings had as a toddler. She smiled at the memory. "No, it suits you," she told Devin and tried to dodge the question about yeast being bad. To her it was a tool, to be nurtured and used, like a farmer and their farm animals. "Though I'll admit there are a lot of things more appealing than raw bread dough." A good book came to mind as an example, or a long cool drink in hot weather. If Devin was always like this - maybe the pleasure and comfort of kneading that raw dough came higher than time spent with him. Her hands flexed in her lap, seeking to twist the edge of her skirt around her fingers before she clasped them together once more.

She wasn't even sure that she wanted to be beautiful, particularly not if it meant constantly being the centre of attention but... "What's wrong with my clothes?" She looked down at her beige blouse and brown skirt. They were comfortable and practical, neat and tidy, and the brown brought out the warmth in her hair and eyes. Was he trying to say that even her clothes were ugly?

"So," she asked, trying to push the expectation back on him and draw out more of the story, "were any of the colours coming from the tree bright enough to match your shirt, or did they clash instead? And how did you get out of there? Did the rainbow rabbits turn up again and carry you off, or did you come up with a plan to charm the tree with a song?" She tipped her head on one side, bird-like, and heard the parrot in the tree above her squawk at a passer-by.