1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of ... (#6)

Pardys Isles

winter: Year 535, New Calendar

With all the fighter types about, the armory is unsurprisingly busy, bustling with people practicing or just having fun with sparring or experimenting with the state-of-the-art weaponry this island was wealthy enough to keep.

Even so, there's a reedy, timid-looking man loitering by the entrance in a way that reads 'guard', despite the doors standing wide open.

Wight eyes that apparent guard, whose blatant anxiety doesn't fit his position. Spy or assassin, perhaps, but why bother with the game here? Who is he angling to fool?

And if he's not seeking to fool someone, why is he standing there?

Wight approaches cautiously, ready to grab her magic and blame it on Paris, wherever he is.

The man is tall but so hunched she only has to look up a little to view his face, and he notices her promptly. Even so, that doesn't explain what he's doing as a guard...except for the sense that something is wrong, the abrupt spike in her pulse, that makes her fear she should have brought her lord with her.

This man is not human, despite how much he looks like one.

"Lady Bar--that is to say, Barun's lady, yes?" His seafarthen stumbles over itself as much as he's stumbling over his own feet while standing. "What brings you down here? Wanna learn to defend yourself? I mean"--and his glance over her is entirely professional and not salacious at all, despite how it lingers--"you could probably benefit from some lessons, but a firearm would probably be the best for you. I'm the same--"

"Weevil!" The half-goblin possible girlfriend to Tully's brother hops out the door of the armory, the goblin half adding a build and coloring that isn't erased by the human side that adds a reddish tint to her skin.

Goblins and Surrenians are from the nearby continent, but they're insular and secretive. Wight's not sure, but... "I thought the hair covering was for wives."

The half-goblin nods once. "And brightly colored clothing for the priestly caste--which is as much situational as it is hereditary, but I am by necessity my own priest, so..."

She gestures to her flamboyant array of incongruously colored and patterned fabric, which both covers her skin in a fitted layer and flutters about in what might be one loose over layer or intentional fabric tassels.

"You like that, though," Weevil says.

The half-goblin preens a little. "I do. It's so fun and pretty and cheerful. Also tells other heretics that I won't eat their hearts, so win-win all around."

Wight blinks. "Is that a concern?"

"What, that somebody might try to kill me to eat my heart with proper ceremony and thereby 'purify' my soul? Of course. The scarf helps, since it's a spouse's responsibility if the partner falls to heresy, but only when they assume I left some husband in the consecrated lands. Hi, population control by means of religion, thy name is Surrenia."

The woman frowns. "I do believe I'm sloshing. What did I consume? Tea, cocoa, coconut... The cheese puffs! Taran! Intoxicating people without their consent is rude! Also criminal, most places!"

She scowls. "Cursed idiots expecting the man to know things without anyone bothering to tell him. How much does that man have to mess up before they admit he needs to be told this shit?