>>5696064As you and your retinue enjoy the meal, you cannot help but nervously glance towards the barn one, or twice, or maybe thrice. You find yourself wishing the Centipede Lancer was with you, to supervise Natvodosk the Unknowable. You’ve left the wyrm alone in the barn, having paid extra for some feed you hope will be suitable for his rather mysterious dietary preferences, and with strict instructions not to supplement that rather bestial fare with an actual beast. Things are going rather smoothly, after all—you’d hate to have an incident, should your offspring decide to eat a horse or goat.
The rest of your retinue are on their best behaviour, of course. That entails Amulets of Disguise for every Reptilian, to help keep things civil and avoid awkward questions. Your other retinue-members hide behind suitably pale and ruddy faces, suitable to the local human subrace. This, in turn, makes Azonia and Olu stand out most of all, as the most exotic individuals. The Duelist in particular becomes an object of rapt fascination for the younger children of your host, who seem to regard the beautiful elven warrior woman with a hero’s reverence.
“Where are you from?” asks Chantel.
“Wevenore,” she answers easily in her (admittedly accented) Northern Common-tongue. “The Oasis of Silk and Crystal, on the shores of the Black Spring.”
“That sounds preeeetty!” Candance gushes.
Azonia chin, rolling her eyes up and to the side in thought, and concludes: “It really depends how good your Darkvision is, and how you feel about spiders.”
This draws some shrieks of hybrid alarm-and-amusement from the girls, who demand details—which the Duelist seems to take cruel pleasure in answering only with vague explanations, so as to further pique their interest and raise further questions.
“Why are you black?” asks ‘Chestnut’, most blatantly, holding up her hand and wondering at the contrast between her own skin and that of the elf.
“CHELSEA!” her mother cries, and looks apologetic, but the Duelist merely laughs.
“Can I see your sword?” Clarice, the oldest, asks.
The Duelist narrows her eyes and smirks slightly and, after getting wordless permission from the girls’ parents and from you, produces one of her blades.
“Spotted that, did you?” she asks. “Good eye, for a human! But did you see… THIS one?”
When the second blade comes out, the girls shriek again—a sound that hurts your ears a little, and crowd around.
“Girls,” Cliff mutters again.
“I must admit, it’s not the stereotype one has of little girls where I am from,” Queen Ekaterine notes, watching the proceedings with clear fondness.
“Don’t pin this on me and mine,” Cliff’s mate, Cynthia, interjects as she tidies up the dishes from dinner. “You’re the one who raises them like boys.”
