[b]"A long walk ahead of us. How might we pass the time? Never mind that... I am Shi'mon. May I ask your name? I notice you've a crafty look to you, a fletcher perhaps?" [/b]

Lila's eyebrows twitched upwards when he spoke to her, and she twisted her mouth into a wry, almost unfriendly smile.

“I am called Lila, I have until recently been a blacksmith.”

She gave the man an appraising look out of the corner of her eye. He was an elf, and she had never set much store towards elves, but this one seemed nice enough, and he recognised her as a tradesperson, even though his initial assumption had been fletcher. If she had been a fletcher her arrows would have been better made, and perhaps her fingers would be less clumsy and covered in grime.

“And what it is that you do, Master Shi'mon?” she asked lightly, glancing to where Thaddeus was leading the way ahead of them and the rest of the motley company were walking around them. Walking next to the elf was requiring her to stretch out her legs more than when she walked alongside Thaddeus, because the elf was so much taller.

But Lila didn't mind. Every step took her further away from the hot fires of the smith and the blood that she would never stop feeling on her hands.