That evening in the great Mountains, the sky roared with the fury of dragons and breathed icy needles down upon the craggy peaks. The wind tore at those scrubby plants that had unshrewdly grown an inch too far from their roots. The flurrying snow bit and tore at exposed skin, blinded the eyes, weighed down furs and coats. Every footstep sank through crunching snow and slippery ice. The only earth visible was that of the jagged cliff faces, gray and muddy stone cold enough to catch a traveler's tongue.
And through the fury of the blizzard, a man in his early twenties stumbled across a narrow ledge and tried to ignore the chasm directly to his left. He was tightly bundled in furs and silks, every part of his face covered save a pair of piercing dark brown eyes. A gleaming iron scythe was strapped to his back, along with several bags and a heavy backpack. He cut a stocky build, though to a stranger looking on, it would be difficult to tell where the furs began and the man began—or if he was human at all.
Alrek usually liked snow just fine.
Tonight, he found he didn't much care for it.
Thunder rumbled overhead. He rolled his eyes. "Tell it to someone who cares, Sky." His teeth chattered with every word.
As he spoke, his foot slipped on a pebble half-secured within the ice, and he lunged forward to grab at a stout sagebrush.
His gloved hands locked around the sagebrush's base just as one leg slid over the side of the ledge. For a moment, he dangled.
The sagebrush groaned, but held. It had been rooted in this cliffside for many years, and clearly had no intention of giving way just yet. It did take the liberty of dumping its load of snow on Alrek's head, however.
The young adventurer pulled himself back up onto the ledge and hurried forward, hugging the cliff face. A moment later, he was off the ledge, and back on 'solid' ground.
The cold gnawed at his joints, despite the layering. He couldn't stop shivering. He was shivering so hard it hurt worse than the cold. Worse, his fingers were getting numb. He'd only barely grabbed that sagebrush—his fingers had turned disobedient, lazy, inflexible. And his eyes stung horribly, despite his efforts to protect them from the searing cold winds.
So badly hampered was his vision that he nearly didn't notice the light off in the distance. When he did notice it, the adventurer stopped in his tracks.
Beneath his scarf, he grinned.
Well, then, Wind,
he thought with bitter glee, hurrying to clamber up towards the source of the glow,
seems like we're just about done screwing around for today.
Alrek was a young adventurer—as a matter of fact, he had only been adventuring for about a month since his departure from home—and he was not yet particularly wise to the wiles of fey. Had he been, he might perhaps have been more hesitant about following a strange light off the beaten path just as night began to fall.
Fortunately for Alrek, though, this particular light just so happened to be genuine.
He leaped onto a covered wooden porch, groaning with relief as some of the wind's roar ebbed from his aching ears, as his boots finally contacted fully solid ground, and huddled against the door. The light was coming from a small cabin built partially into the mountainside, practically buried in snow.
Through the nearby window, he saw the dim glow of an oil lantern. It looked like some kind of tavern. There was a fireplace in there, sadly unlit. He huddled against the door and wrapped his arms around himself, shivering against the wind.
Mountain Folk had rules about hospitality, and those rules varied by clan. Alrek knew the
snærið
always welcomed visitors who came unarmed, but he guessed that the owner of this house was of the
gestrisnið
—the people who kept away from large settlements, the hermits and rangers and innkeepers of the Mountains. The
gestrisnið
were a hospitable lot, but they had their own rituals, and Alrek only knew a few of them.
For instance, it was important to have a gift.
Alrek certainly didn't possess much to give. His first solo dungeon crawl had been a disaster. He looked mournfully down at the small paper bag parcel he had tied to his belt. Tied tightly with string, these two little treasures were all he had to show for all of this.
But he would freeze to death otherwise.
Perhaps he could part with—
The door he was leaning against abruptly swung inward, and he fell backwards with a
whump
.
"Oh!" said a light, high-pitched voice. "Oh, Stars! I'm so sorry!"
Alrek stared up, head spinning from its slight bump into the stone floor. Luckily, his furs and bags had cushioned most of the fall for him.
He rolled over onto his hands and knees, staring up at the strange little woman with wary eyes, and reached up and tugged the scarf from his face so he could speak freely.
Alrek's stubble had grown thick and dark since he'd set out, and he now had something approaching a beard. He brushed a bit of snow and ice from it before speaking. "What are you?"
His words came out brusque and blunt. That was pretty much normal. Alrek was never quite sure how else to address people.
Especially not people who looked like this.
Alrek had seen a fair variety of skin tones. He had met plainsfolk from down south with skin the color of fresh butter and hair that glinted in the sun like the summer fields. He had seen the umber-skinned merchants come by on occasion from the distant northern jungles, come to trade their strange wares and technologies (or, occasionally, to offer sermons and aid) to the savage southerners. He had met a brown-skinned woman from the Northern Isles, a Toxin Ranger with a rolling accent that plinked like a spider's legs upon webbing, and encountered bards from the Wild East with light skin the same color as their bizarre brass instruments.
He had never in his life, however, met someone green before.
She was short. Even shorter than Alrek, and Alrek wasn't exactly tall. She stood about a foot shorter than him, but made up for it with a plump, lush figure. Her plump dark green lips were pursed at the moment, as if in thought. Her eyes glinted a lovely rosy-pink, complimented by thick, pronounced lashes that fluttered every now and then as if trying to dislodge something. The simple barmaid's dress she wore almost seemed to caress her nubile form, complimenting her softness, emphasizing her prodigious curves. Her hair was done in a sleek bouffant, dark and glistening in the candlelight, offset by a pair of long, pointed ears
and also she was extremely green
.
She blinked up at him, eyelashes fluttering. "Um... oh, well, what a question. Maybe I should be asking
you
that!"
