Author's Note: Dreams and flashbacks will be marked with a ~ separator, rather than the normal dashes.
Honey
----
Talos looked over the food stalls under the cold sun of an Isbryggan morning. He picked up another fruit he did not recognize and smelled it before returning it to the cart. He sighed, thinking how wonderful the world would be if all men were required to grow apples. He finally decided on the purple fruit, figuring it's sweetness to be close enough and paid the vendor three coppers for a dozen before placing them in his backpack.
"Talos... everyone is staring at me," he heard Casiama whisper like a frightened girl behind him, now changed back into her comfortable travel clothes.
"Well honey, you should kind of expect that after dancing in front of fifty-some odd people the first day you arrive in a town," he replied with a smirk, simultaneously realizing he should go buy some honey.
"Well you could have stopped me. Why didn't you stop me?"
He turned to face her before answering. "Cass, you're joking, right? There was
no
way I was going to stop that. It may have been the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
He paused before continuing, scanning the elf's figure from head to toe, "okay, second most beautiful after
Tor Casiama,
" he chuckled, referring to her naked body as he had done in the past. She pushed him playfully before smiling.
"Well, maybe don't let me drink too much next time. I don't like losing control."
Talos shrugged. "Who am I, your wetnurse? Cass, don't worry about it," he consoled her, grabbing her shoulders. "Seriously. You danced like an angel for an hour or so, collapsed on me and I carried you to bed. As innocent a night could be."
"... I danced on a table in front of
strangers,
Talos. In my
skirts
...", Casiama explained slowly, as if he hadn't seen the performance. Her face reddened as she thought back to the events again.
"Okay, like a lusty angel then," he smirked and added, "it was awesome," before raising his sight and scanning the small market place for a honey vendor that wouldn't exist.
Casiama wondered why Talos would allow her to perform as she did last night. It was incredible to her that he didn't mind; any other man would keep their woman from doing the same, hoarding her body as if they owned it.
Sure,
she
wouldn't mind if Talos ever asked to sleep with another woman; as long as she could watch. Heck, her first dozen or so orgasms were at the sight of Talos fucking a voluptuous auburn-haired sorceress in front of her. But how carefree could he be, any way?
"Cass, got any honey?" Talos asked, snapping her out of her train of thought. She shrugged and shook her head once.
"Ah well. Let's get going then."
--
Torvald had set out early that morning from Vitvarg, finding his bed still shared with a northerner woman that didn't quite look as pretty as she did the previous night. He had packed, said "sorry" as well he could in their language, and departed as quickly as he could.
The weather was fortunately cooperating, the cold evening sun shining down on his travels as he trekked southward. He found his mind constantly returning to Cass, the elf having danced graceful and seductive long into the night. As soon as the elf had ended her routine had Torvald found himself dragging his own woman upstairs to sate his needs, as did most of the inn if they were fortunate to have a woman that night. Talos likely had the best night out of them all.
Lucky man, the cap'n is.
Torvald found himself making excellent time, covering almost twenty miles that day through the foot-deep snow pack of Isbrygga. He looked forward to his next meeting with the cute sorceress back in the Empire, assured he would finally then have his needs completely fulfilled.
He arrived at the next settlement, a small village, just as the sun began to drift below the mountainous horizon to the west.
A small boy, no older than eight, scrounged through the trash of the town's only inn. Torvald frowned and was reminded of his own terrible childhood at the sight. He fished out a silver Imperial from his coinpurse and handed it to the kid with a smile. The kid gripped the coin with both hands and looked down, as if unsure what to do with his new-found wealth.
Ah... right,
Torvald thought, realizing his mistake and grabbed a hardbread sandwich and a cut of cheese from his pack.
"Here ya go little lad. Stay strong, eh?" Torvald reassured the boy in a language he wouldn't understand, patting him on the head before entering the inn to hopefully greater conquests.
--
Talos and Casiama were a day's out from Vitvarg, traveling south as the shadowy skies of dusk were already enveloping the serene landscape around them. Casiama was crouched low and behind a fallen pine tree, her bow at the ready not forty feet in front of Talos. She waved him forward.
"What?" Talos whispered, his eyes following where the elf's fingers were pointing. He spotted a group of travelers, Talos thinking they were likely a group of merchants judging from the pack mules trundling beside them. They wore the standard clothing of Isbrygga, furs over baggy clothing, and each held a torch.
"So?" he asked again, still in a whisper. His hand shot up to the elf's white-gold studded bow, forcing her to lower it.
"They're armed," she whispered back, her eyes not leaving the group in front of them. Talos rose to his feet.
"Cass, you can't just attack every person you meet on the road that looks half dangerous," he chided, now speaking at a normal tone of voice. A traveler below with a brown bearskin cape noticed Talos on the ridge above, and reached for his sword.
"See, now you have them nervous. We look like damned raiders hiding like this," Talos explained gruffly, waving to the man below him as if to apologize.
"They could be bad people!" Casiama whispered worriedly, still crouching, albiet unnocking her bow. Talos rolled his eyes.
"Most likely they're not. Look... this kind of thing, Cass? This is what almost got me and Alanna killed when you first met us in the borderlands. If you're going to travel with me, you can't-"
"Okay, okay," she whispered, rising to her feet as well. She slung her bow over her shoulder and finally looked at the man beside her, then cleared her throat. "I thought you said you were over that."
"I said I forgave you, Cass. Big difference," he retorted with crossed arms. Casiama pushed him, just enough for him to lose his balance for a moment, and giggled gleefully.
"Speaking of travel. Where exactly are we headed?" Casiama asked playfully.
The man shrugged his shoulders, opening his palm to the chill wind.
"South," he replied, "because it's cold here, and I just realized that I hate it."
"Where south?"
"Anywhere it isn't snowing, I reckon. We can winter in Catriona, maybe rent out a nice townhouse by the water. The winter sunsets of Catriona are famed, supposedly," he justified. If Talos was honest to himself, he really had no idea where he was going. He did, however, suppose that watching two dozen sunsets with Casiama would be a worthy enough cause.
She shrugged her own shoulders, not seeming entirely convinced of the notion. An elf did not want to be reacquainted with a particular sorceress, fearing her pull on Talos.
"Is Evora on the way?" she questioned, reminding him again that he still hadn't shown her his birthplace.
"It could be. We'd have to go southeast a ways, head through Graelyn's Pass to Skymarch since Evora is inland." The plan would remove the possibility of traveling by sea from Villjord, much to Talos' dismay. Still, if it made Casiama happy...
Talos looked down and sighed, thinking of Rayya; a girl that, while not bonded by blood, was the closest thing the man had ever had to a daughter. He had saved her life from some wolves in Graelyn's Pass, once.
He had promptly returned the runaway to her father, the Marquis of Skymarch, before she had somehow found her freedom again that same night...
~~
A twenty-eight year old Talos drank contentedly at the bar of an Aindarnian inn, tossing his loaded coinpurse in his hand with pride. He could not believe the Marquis would pay such a hefty sum -- twenty golden Imperials -- just for the simple three-day job of finding his daughter. Talos would live in luxury for a good half year on this.
He sighed, remembering the helpless look on the girl's face when he returned her to her father.
She really was too good for this world
, he thought. But he wasn't being paid to make a girl happy.
