Aventus half-smiled, half-grimaced at his ‘warm’ welcome back to camp, looking between Ziria and Maria with a mixture of mirth and quiet resignation. Maria’s enthusiasm was always encouraging, even if she was still as clumsy as ever, and Ziria… well, Ziria’s response was pretty much as expected.

“Glad to see you’re both doing okay!” He called out with a teasing grin, slowly clambering down the hill. He didn’t bother to respond to Ziria’s little jive, knowing she probably wouldn’t answer him, anyways, but he did take note of what she’d said; true enough, it’d been three days without even so much as an inquiry of interest, and Aventus did indeed think he’d have to ramp up his efforts, soon.

[i]”Unfortunately, that’s not the only problem…”[/i] The young commander thought to himself, watching as Ziria returned to grooming her steed. He was well aware of the pegasus knight’s disdain for him (and for most people, in general). He knew she didn’t approve of his style of leadership, and, admittedly, he couldn’t blame her. But what she thought of him on a personal level wasn’t all that important, at least not for Ven; what concerned him more was the fact that if she didn’t approve of him, that could very well lead to her desertion in the long run, and right now they couldn’t afford to lose anybody. Maybe he’d talk to her about it, later - the only issue was, what would he say?

However, before he could get too far down that train of thought, the sight of a stylishly robed man with gorgeous, black hair striding into camp broke him out of his reverie, and he watched as the man offered a hand to the youngest member of the crew.

“Would you know who I should speak to about joining up with this ‘Greywood Company’?” The robed man asked, helping Maria up. Aventus wasted no time, though, bounding up to the man and giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder.

“That’d be me, good sir!” He said with a grin. His first new recruit, lucky! “You’re lookin’ to join, then? If you’ll just follow me into my tent, we can go through the whole process of getting you signed up and ready for action!”

He knew he was taking things a bit too quickly, but this was the only bite they’d had, so far, and he wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip by. Pointing to the big tent in the middle of their campgrounds, he motioned for the man to follow him, fuzzy ears twitching in excitement.

“Maria, you think you could fetch our guest here some refreshments? I think we still have some ale lying in a barrel around here, somewhere.” The zenka said as he went, looking to the plucky wyvern rider covered in mud. He suddenly turned back to the potential new recruit, though, as he realized he’d forgotten to introduce himself.

“Name’s Aventus, by the way. Commander of the Greywood Company, Jaris Branch!”