>>5696119“O-oh!” Ekaterine stands up suddenly. “I can help, if—?”
“I won’t say no,” says the lady of the house, as Ekaterine rises and fumblingly offers her flailing, ill-experienced aid in cleaning up.
Your other attendants exchange looks, and then look to you. You realize with a start that you have volunteered no assistance, nor has anyone else in your party, and aren’t sure whether to express remorse or not. You are visiting dignitaries, after all, but you are also guests. You look to Cliff questioningly, who shrugs again.
“Doesn’t look like your woman—your lady, rather—has ever touched a dish in her life. If the others are better than her at it, have at it.”
You nod to your retinue, who hop to it, helping to tidy the cabin and to attend to the many mundane necessities which seem to characterize life on this frontier of humanity. In the meantime, you follow Cliffs lead—a fellow patriarch—and remain seated, extracting further information on the local ecology and societal organization. It seems that Cliff’s family is acquainted somewhat with scattered other households and farmsteads like this one, though his is uncommonly isolated—many more choose to live with several households butted up against one another in a village-structure, servicing communal farmsteads.
“You have no sssuch dessire for community?” you ask.
“I came to Blackpine to get AWAY from city-living,” Cliff explains. “Don’t expect I’d make for a good neighbour now… Though I guess I’ll have to re-learn a little, at least. Clarice is just about marrying age, and the only thing worse than her going away to one of the villages and my not visiting would be if she brought some other guy to live HERE, and I had to get sued to him being around always.”
“What about your Baron?” you ask. “It sseemsss he doesssn’t often enter into affairsss, from what you’ve desscribed. Doess he do sso for the villagess?”
“Ha!” Cliff barks with that strange laugh f his again. “Only when it’s winter-time and he needs food. Lazy bastard.”
You’re a little startled at his frankness, but also intrigued.
“I’d been led to believe that Baron Brunusss iss a sskilled hunter,” you note. “He cannot feed himssself?”
“Mighty fine question, Lord Theral,” Cliff agrees. “But then, tell me: are you a hunter?”
“Yesss,” you answer, quickly and proudly, reflecting back on the many mighty monsters you have felled, from the Great Devourer to the Shoggoth, the Ghoul Supreme, and on your hunt in this very area for the strange blue beats with your insectoid sons many months prior.
“Do you feed yourself?” Cliff asks bluntly. “Mostly? Catch and kill your own food? Prepare it yourself, or have your wife there prepare it? Wash up after yourself?”
