>>5785845“I… Get by. But a traveling musician’s wage isn’t quite that of the sellsword, ey wot?”
You felt a pang of pity for the man, and awkwardness at his embarrassment. For his sake as much as your own, you changed the subject.
“Did you meet my mother while you were out… Adventuring?”
Adolfo’s eyes widened, and he asked: “Mylaerlea never told you the tale of how two hearts were met and wedded? Well, never LEGALLY wedded, but—”
“She doesn’t—didn’t, anyway—talk about you much,” you admitted, and your father crumpled a little more.
“What she said was all positive,” you added, to cheer him, which seemed to work somewhat.
“Well then,” your father said with a grin, taking his lute from his back, “if she neglected to educate you on this most important and illustrious matter, allow ME to do my fatherly duty—IN SONG!”
“NO,” came a reply from the inn’s other patrons.
“…Well, the long and short of it, if we MUST BE BARBARIANS about tales of LOVE and LOSS,” your father began, emphasizing certain words at volume while glaring daggers past you, “is that your mother and I once traveled the lands together, during our youths—well, my youth, she’s no doubt still lovely as the dew upon spring’s first blossom, forever a vision beyond any vista’s compare… yes?”
“Uh,” you said, trying to reconcile this with, well, your mom.
“Nevermind,” you father sighed expression wistful, “I know it must be true. Never could fair Mylaerlea be anything other than the sunlight that shimmers betwixt the silver leaves of the elven woodlands, illuminated in that dawn-and0dusk shimmering of the fairy courts’ own spectral lights.”
“You’ve been there?” Izirina asked, suddenly fascinated. “And… Attended a fairy court!”
“Of course, my girl!” your father said with a wink. “‘Twas upon a bed of such silver-gilded foliage that your little friend was conceived, after a most glorious hunting-down of terrible and corrupt spirit of the darkwoods. Our passions were running hot, and her bosom was heaving and, well, when a man with fiery blood sees such a bosom as THAT he must ACT, you understand!”
Pearce didn’t even bother trying not to laugh this time, as your face reddened to the tips of your pointed ears. Your pity waned.
“Why did she leave you, then?” you shot back.
Silence fell for a moment, as you swigged some of your own drink to temper your humiliation and your father grappled with the question.
“I left her, actually,” he confessed eventually, with a cringe.
